Hunting

My read of reference 1, last noticed at reference 2, continues.

I was struck yesterday by a few pages about hunting buffalo, still plentiful on the Plains around 1830.

So a large buffalo might stand six feet tall at the shoulder, weigh around a ton and be armed with a couple of substantial horns. Provided the hunter did not creep up on him (or her, young cows being favoured for eating), which was difficult, and the buffalo had a reasonable start, it might take a horse four or five miles to run him down. And then the hunter had to have a steady enough hand to plant spear, arrow or bullet in the right place to bring the animal down cleanly. Get it badly wrong and he might get you instead.

We are told that a five mile chase in the clear, cold air of early morning was the most exhilarating thing in the world, almost as good as being in a battle - with one of the characters in this book being a Waterloo man. Followed by the kill. Drag hunts did not count at all.

Part of the fun was the danger. The ground was littered with the burrows of animals like prairie dogs and if your horse put a foot in one, you were off the horse, the horse might break a leg and so might you. Or worse. And then the buffalo, not the brightest animal in the world, did have the good sense to head into broken ground, where again you might come to grief.

And then buffalo for tea, with what sounds like prodigious quantities of the meat (and guts) being eaten and fat being drunk. One can only suppose that they got lots of exercise, plenty of exposure and needed the calories.

DeVoto also tells us that the Indians could just as wasteful as the white men, only taking the parts that they liked, leaving the rest. But he doesn't tell us (not yet anyway) of the massive slaughter which went on when the trade in buffalo robes was good - and which eventually killed off the herds.

Not sure that I would take to a chap who got his kicks out of killing large animals in this way.

Reference 1: Across the wide Missouri - Bernard DeVoto - 1948.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/01/big-tent.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/09/john-williams.html. For notice of an easy-read book about buffaloes. Set about 50 years after the present book.

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/11/double-georges.html. For a trace, if not notice of the present book. So the first read must have been at least a decade ago, I suspect rather more.

Reference 5: https://en.wahooart.com/. The source of the illustration above, a water colour by the same Alfred Jacob Miller, many of whose water colours are included in the present book. But beware, one of those sites that plays you unsolicited, irritating music.