Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire found washed out of the salmon stream at Scotts today

shots with a digital endoscope/microscope.....unfortunately this is a cheap one with manual focus so its real hard for me to get great pics but you can see flecks of bone on the flint in these pics

Very evident they had done this before.
As we chant today......."shot placement.......shot placement".

Makes ya wonder if they had the equivalent of "the Perfect Shot" by Boddington........except on tanned hide.

I came across a reference regarding buffalo and antelope in eastern Washington by George Gibbs in a report to General McClellan in 1854. Gibbs was hired to assess the First Nations peoples of Washington Territory prior to the treaties. Besides his reports on the tribes and tribal leaders, Gibbs made numerous observations about the Washington landscape. Regarding large game in eastern Washington Gibbs reported, "Of the larger game there is but little in their own country. The buffalo, it would seem, in former times penetrated at least occasionally thus far to the westward, though now they never come through the northern passes. We were informed by an old Iroquois hunter, at Fort Colville, who has been some forty-eight years in the company's service, that the last bull was killed some twenty-five years ago in the Grand Coulee."

This matches David Douglas (of Douglas fir fame) reporting eating buffalo tongue as a treat given to him by Wanapum people near present day Hanford in the 1820s.

These two reports strike me as reasonably reliable and extend the period of time bison were in Washington State to the 1820s. It is generally thought that previous bison populations came not through the northern passes, but via eastern Oregon and the Snake River plain of Idaho. The arrival of horses and guns combined with relatively marginal habitat and forage as well as poor connectedness to other populations brought about the demise of the bison in Washington State well before American settlement and well before the notorious wasteful slaughter of the herds on the high plains in the later part of the 1800s.

Well they only had to shoot "Minute of Buffalo" back then...

Come to think of it, I had a rifle like that once. For a very short period of time...

Much later, at least early 1800's. This was in NW Washington. A few ships were putting into Puget sound around 1800 but it was likely quite a few years later before iron arrow heads were generally available.

Very Sound advice Blue

They only need a tiny piece of it to date it.

Hack it off yourself.

Talk to them over email,and send them pics of it.

Then send them a tiny hunk.

Done.

Cattle? Mustang? Steppe Bison? Wooly Mammoth? Mormon?

Short faced bear?, grizzly bear?, yogi bear? Saber tooth tiger?