Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire if food got in short supply, and i'm not sayin' it will:

I'll will agree that human's rifles finished off what was left. But just like the European introduced human diseases raced ahead of the white people and killed Indians in huge numbers the cattle diseases got out there and worked over the bison. There is no other rational explanation. Texas tick fever just like anaplasmosis can take down a fat healthy bovine in short order. No way would taking even 3 million a year out of a healthy herd have exterminated the plains bison. You are an intelligent man. All it takes is a little arithmetic. So I am going to agree with you that yes hunters did finish off the bison herds. That would be the bison that had survived through some sort of natural immunity. African herds had some remnant that survived the great rinderpest plague and some humans had immunity to Black Death. So I would say had the surviving bison been left on the plains without being hunted they would have restored they would have restored their former numbers with naturally immune individuals.