Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/96

 the furry robe and one-fifth from skins classed as "hides," which were either taken in the summer season, when the hair was very short or almost absent, and used for the manufacture of leather and leather goods, or else were the poorly-furred skins of old bulls.

The season for robe-taking was from October 15 to February 15, and a little later in the more northern latitudes. In the United States the hair of the buffalo was still rather short up to the first of November; but by the middle of November it was about at its finest as to length, density, color, and freshness. The Montana hunters considered that the finest robes were those taken from November 15 to December 15. Before the former date the hair had not quite attained perfection in length, and after the latter it began to show wear and lose color. The winter storms of December and January began to leave their mark upon the robes by the 1st of February, chiefly by giving the hair a bleached and weathered appearance. By the middle of February the pelage was decidedly on the wane, and the robe hunter was also losing his energy. Often, however, the hunt was kept up until the middle of March, until either the deterioration of the quality of the robe, the migration of the herds northward, or the hunter's longing to return "to town" and "clean up," brought the hunt to an end.

On the northern buffalo range, the hunter, or "buffalo skinner," removed the robe in the following manner:

When the operator had to do his work alone, which was almost always the case, he made haste to skin his victims while they were yet warm, if possible, and before rigor mortis had set in; but, at all hazards, before they should become hard frozen. With a warm buffalo he could easily do his work single-handed, but with one rigid or frozen stiff it was a very different matter.

His first act was to heave the carcass over until it lay fairly upon its back, with its feet up in the air. To keep it in that position lie wrenched the head violently around to one side, close against the shoulder, at the point where the hump was highest and the tendency to roll the greatest, and used it very effectually as a chock to keep the body from rolling back upon its side. Having fixed the carcass in position he drew forth his steel, sharpened his sharp-pointed "ripping-knife," and at once proceeded to make all the opening cuts in the skin. Each leg was girdled to the bone, about 8 inches above the hoof, and the skin of the leg ripped open from that point along the inside to the median line of the body. A long, straight cut was then made along the middle of the breast and abdomen, from the root of the tail to the chin. In skinning cows and young animals, nothing but the skin of the forehead and nose was left on the skull, the skin of the throat and cheeks being left on the hide; but in skinning old bulls, on whose heads the skin was very thick and tough, the whole head was left unskinned, to save labor and time. The skin of the neck was severed in a circle around the neck, just behind the ears. It is these huge heads of bushy brown hair, looking, at a