Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Fadala article on bison

I just read a fascinating article in Hunting magazine. Fadala argues that hunters are not to blame for the wiping out of the bison. He maintains that 60 million animals spread across hundreds of thousands of square miles could not have been done away with by a few thousand shooters in a quarter century. His claim is that the culprit was disease spread by cattle as they were brought north from Texas.

I've not heard this claim before but it makes a lot of sense to me. What does everyone think about this? Is Fadala's claim backed by other researchers?

Haven't read the article so I can only speculate but my guess is he is talking about Texas fever or redwater which was spread by ticks. Longhorn cattle had built up some natural immunity over the centuries they had been in Texas and so had the buffalo. When the trail herds were driven north though Texas fever devistated northern cattle.

Per Col. Goodnights work with plains buffalo I conclude that the southern herd also had partial immunity.

I well may be wrong in my guess as to what Fadala is claiming but that is the only disease common to both species that occurs to me.

I'm not sure they weren't all shot. I found this.

The hunter would customarily locate the herd in the early morning, and station himself about 100 yards (90 m) from it, shooting the animals broadside through the lungs. Head shots were not preferred as the soft lead bullets would often flatten and fail to penetrate the skull, especially if mud was matted on the head of the animal. The bison would continue to drop until either the herd sensed danger and stampeded or perhaps a wounded animal attacked another, causing the herd to disperse. If done properly a large number of bison would be felled at one time. Following up were the skinners, who would drive a spike through the nose of each dead animal with a sledgehammer, hook up a horse team, and pull the hide from the carcass. The hides were dressed, prepared, and stacked on the wagons by other members of the organization.



A bull bison, illustrated in The Extermination of the American Bison. Used on the obverse of the 1901 American Bison $10 bill.
For a decade from 1873 on there were several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, such commercial hide hunting outfits harvesting bison at any one time, vastly exceeding the take by American Indians or individual meat hunters. The commercial take arguably was anywhere from 2,000 to 100,000 animals per day depending on the season, though there are no statistics available. It was said that the Big .50s were fired so much that hunters needed at least two rifles to let the barrels cool off; The Fireside Book of Guns reports they were sometimes quenched in the winter snow. Dodge City saw railroad cars sent East filled with stacked hides.

I also read Fadalas article and thought it was a stretch to say the least from the numerous sources I've read. He bases a lot of his info on hide shipment numbers. Many hides were lost due to wet weather, transit problems, failure to be skinned quickly enough, or even Indian encounters. I'd bet the actual hides shipped were only a fraction of what was really killed each year.

There was a demand for buffalo hides and good money could be made doing it. Ex-soldiers after the Civil War were looking to cash in. With rifles and ammo in supply after the war, they made serious dents in the buffalo population.

Buffalo weren't the only animals to be reduced to alomost nothing by the start of the 20th Century. Antelope, elk, bighorn sheep, grizzlies and wolves all were just about done for. Ironically, I've read wolf numbers increased during the big buffalo hunting years due to limitless supply of carcasses.

Skimmed the article in the news stand in the Bozeman airport on Sunday. It was the main reason that I put the magazine back on the rack and returned to my book for the flights home.

I have the article and quite honestly have always wondered how the millions of buffalo could have been reduced to the numbers they are today by hunting alone. Casual reproduction in a heard of around 60 million, (a number well recognized by many as a viable count of buffalo in those days) would still reproduce at a rate of over 20 million/year maybe closer to 30 million. Those numbers still would exceed the claims of the hide hunters and sport hunters of the day.

I would really like to know more solid numbers of the animals killed in those years, as millions/year would take a lot of powder, lead and shooters to count for so many dead buffalo. For example, 10,000 shooters taking 1000 buffalo apiece would relate to 10 million buffalo/year a staggering number, but still below the natural reproductive number...

One example.


William Frederick Cody ("Buffalo Bill") got his nickname after the American Civil War when he had a contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat. Cody earned the nickname by killing 4,280 American bison (commonly known as buffalo) in eighteen months

He is best known for his prolific rate of killing buffalo, and yet he is 996,000 short of a million in a year and a half...

The 60 million number has been contested by a number of modern biologists, many of whom guess more like 20 million at the peak.

The original population estimates often come from testimonials made during the first half of the 1800's. This was AFTER a lot of plains tribes had been reduced incredibly by diseases transmitted from Europeans, reducing Indian predation considerably.

By the mid-1800's a lot of tribes had firearms, and made considerable inroads into bison herds when hunting for hides, tongues, etc. (Yeah, Indians did it too.) By 1870, when the big hide-hunting years began, there weren't anywhere near 60 million bison, or possibly even 10 million.

Yes, hunting of whatever type had a real place in the "disappearance" of the bison. But loss of wide-open grasslands had more effect.

If disease was the major cause of population drop, then it would have severely slowed the rise in the bison population over the past century. That didn't happen.

Shrapnel, Not to change the subject but have you read "American Buffalo: In search of a Lost Icon" by Steven Rinella? It's a good read.

Back to the buffalo going bye bye. It is hard to wrap ones mind around 40 million buffalo being used up, but up to the time of the fur trade, Southeastern Idaho was a popular wintering spot for Indians and trappers. During this time buffalo were in good supply, but by the 1840's buffalo had mostly disappeared from this area and never came back. I think it was a 100 year chipping away process and the buffalo just got a little more behind each year.

After the northern tribes were confined to reservations the buffalo didn't last long. In June of 1877, in the valley of the Bighorn river just 20 miles north of where Custer was wiped out the year before, the Crow killed 1000 buffalo.
A white trader was set up at the mouth of the Bighorn and from the Crow he purchased 4000 tanned hides,the good ones called silk robes, for 6 cups of brown sugar apiece, plus holding his thumb in the cup the whole time. This was witnessed by Lt. Hugh Scott.
A few weeks later Lt Scott and Capt. Frederick Benteen were up on the dry fork of the Missouri, the heart of the hunting grounds and estimated they could see 300,000 in one view from a high point.
Then just a few years later by 1881-82, Baptiste Pourier rode up into the Black Hills country and in his own words "and hunted, just hunted. And at that time every hill and every little place where you could put up a tent, there was two or three hunters there and just as soon as it was light enough all you would hear was gun shots all day until sundown. If the moon would shine, they would shoot all night. And they kept that up."
Lt Scott wrote that in the summer of '83 there were 3,000 men on the range killing for hides, by Sept you couldn't find a buffalo. A year later, in August of '84, Scott killed a final buffalo. He never saw another.
The herds went that fast.

From what I read, it took as little as five years from 1872 to basically reduce the herds to the point where it was hard to find them...
This is the first time I have heard the "60 million" figure, previously it was always 20 million. But I did read of an account where someone went back and checked the railway shipping documents that still remained, extrapolated similiar figures for the railway companies whose records were missing and came up with between 10-12 million hides shipped in the 1870's.
Of course, the actual kill would have been greater, a lot of hides spoiled and a lot shot that were not skinned because the men couldnt handle the workload and so forth. Also a great many were shot just for their tongues if I remember right, if the hides were not good enough or large enough to take, then that was all they took, so I would think they were not included in those figures.
I suppose it will never be conclusive, but never underestimate the power of a dollar when it comes to reducing animal populations quickly...

Just addressing the basic thrust of the article the thread is about, surely something like this would have been a concern for the buffalo hunters at the time and would be a recognised part of the record? People would have been aware of it if it was taking such a great toll on the animal population?

Well it took years for bison to come back to a shadow of there numbers. Yes market hunting had an effect, lost of habitat had an effect and cattle diseases like Blue tongue that still takes a toll on game from time to time. It was not just one thing and one thing alone but many. Southern Africa had Rinderpest that decimated game populations in at the turn of the 19th century. It was a tragedy, but don't forget there was a war been fought too, and bison was the primary food source for one of the combatants in that long painful and some what shameful war. Both sides can't claim sainthood either.

For some reason everybody always seems to gloss right past the documented drought, and hard winters. Range fires had to be a common occurance and destroy alot of feed for the bison as well.
Not to mention if you put a pencil to the actual number of head claimed to be here and then figure out how big of a chunk at least 30 acres per head would be.
Also if the hide hunters killed them all off Sharps rifle co would not have went bust twice before the herds were wiped out and Remington and Winchester would not have been scrappin so hard for governement contracts.
Ever figure out how much lead at an average of 400 grs per round and 3 shots per head would amount to? Not to mention the number of primers and pounds of powder.
Lots of things account for the almost extinction of the bison, when you take a purely objective look at the whole picture there really isn't any one thing a person can point to.
Shrapnel also made a most excellent point about the reproduction numbers even at a 10 million herd level, the reproduction rate should of been in excess of 2 million head per year.

Interesting replies. I've come to believe that over-hunting was not the only cause of the near extinction of the buffalo, but it certainly may have been the major one. I'm just still not convinced that a few thousand hunters could wipe out at least 10 million animals (that annually reproduce).

Many domestic cattle were wiped out by disease spread by Texas cattle so it seems totally reasonable to expect buffalo to have been effected, too. Also, the reference to the harsh winters is a great point. Thousands of cattle were wiped out by severe blizzards in the 1880's and this would have undoubtedly been devastating to an already severely stressed herd.

Buffalo are one of the most hardy, cold-resistant animals ever created. No doubt some would die every winter, but they weren't affected like cattle by any stretch. Drought would have been a bigger impact. But hard winters, drought, fires, mass drownings were something buffalo had been absorbing for thousands of years and could still flourish in.

As people populated the frontier the buffalo were simply shot out and run off. There was no place for them in a farming and ranching nation and the portions of the plains to be last settled and brought under control were where the buffalo held on the longest. Not to mention the easiest and cheapest way to bring tribes under control was to get rid of the buffalo and shooting them was actively promoted.

What amazes me is the bullets makers at the time could produce 10, 20 or 60 million rounds capable of taking a bison and still produce ammo for other civilain and military purposes.

From what I have read, most buffalo hunters recast and loaded their own and when possible recovered and remelted lead from dead animals. Even if the buffalo hunters primarily used factory ammo, it was probably just a fraction of what was manufactured during the Civil War. Wasting buffalo by shooting more than the skinners could handle wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but wasting ammo was.

The stuff brought to light in the Buffalo Hunters Encyolpedia, sure throws a damper on some of the grandeous big kills. Some of those guys went weeks without seeing any buffalo.
Which brings up another point, they had streetlights in Cheyenne 6 years before Dixon and co got in that scrape at Adobe Walls, yet theres little mention of any large buffalo herds along and around the UP rightofway.Some of the Army expeditions thru the Blackhills and surrounding country had to eat their pack mules because there wasn't anything else to eat... Doesn't really jive with the massive hoards of bison roaming on the plains..
Reading some of the old mtn man journals will also make a fella wonder about how thick the buffalo supposedly were, those guys spent half their time starving to death.

Years ago I did a research paper on the reduction/demise of many
game animals and we fail to realize the number they killed in those days.

I only wish I could remember the number of deer and elk ONE market hunter delivered to Denver in a month, but it would astound the average "Hunter".

Bison . . . Hey they blasted them like folks do prairie dogs today and their recruitment rate is MUCH lower.

Disease may have played a part . . . You know loss of habitat did too

Today the wild bison threaten domestic cattle with a disease which causes spontaneous abortion or some such,I forget the name/action.

See ruffcutt's post below for the diseases I couldn't remember.

My mothers great aunt had a bison skull in the "shop" that was found on the place near Beeler KS, but is was found "Way back when", and that was back in the 60s.