Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/172

 kills sparingly and conscientiously is rather the exception than the rule. Colonel Dodge thus refers to the work of some foreign sportsmen:

"In the fall of that year (1872) three English gentlemen went out with me for a short hunt, and in their excitement bagged more buffalo than would have supplied a brigade." As a general thing, however, the professional sportsmen who went out to have a buffalo hunt for the excitement of the chase and the trophies it yielded, nearly always found the bison so easy a victim, and one whose capture brought so little glory to the hunter, that the chase was voted very disappointing, and soon abandoned in favor of nobler game. In those days there was no more to boast of in killing a buffalo than in the assassination of a Texas steer.

It was, then, the hide-hunters, white and red, but especially white, who wiped out the great southern herd in four short years. The prices received for hides varied considerably, according to circumstances, but for the green or undressed article it usually ranged from 50 cents for the skins of calves to $1.25 for those of adult animals in good condition. Such prices seem ridiculously small, but when it is remembered that, when buffaloes were plentiful it was no uncommon thing for a hunter to kill from forty to sixty head in a day, it will readily be seen that the chances of making very handsome profits were sufficient to tempt hunters to make extraordinary exertions. Moreover, even when the buffaloes were nearly gone, the country was overrun with men who had absolutely nothing else to look to as a means of livelihood, and so, no matter whether the profits were great or small, so long as enough buffaloes remained to make it possible to get a living by their pursuit, they were hunted down with the most determined persistency and pertinacity.

6. Statistics of the slaughter.—The most careful and reliable estimate ever made of results of the slaughter of the southern buffalo herd is that of Col. Richard Irving Dodge, and it is the only one I know of which furnishes a good index of the former size of that herd. Inasmuch as this calculation was based on actual statistics, supplemented by personal observations and inquiries made in that region during the great slaughter, I can do no better than to quote Colonel Dodge almost in full.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad furnished the following statistics of the buffalo product carried by it during the years 1872, 1873, and 1871: