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

humans are doing our best to move forward. good heavy duty shotguns helped feed the cities with wild ducks, etc.

we're slowly beginning to wonder if we can feed ourselves without digging into the wild protein supply?

i suspect we can, given enough effort, luck, and application of scientific method.

is it even possible to consider the relocation of wild animals to their original location on the earth?

and who would decide, pray tell?

That's about right.

What do you reckon killed all those bison?

They couldn't adapt. Putting wild buffalo Indians on reservations is like dropping New York yuppies in the Yukon.

Lead poisoning.

The Donner party woulda made a stew out of you.

Jeebus....a fantasy.

We are feeding the world three times over with one hand tied behind our back........and you guys want to talk about wild game........

If a diet of grain, and vegetables were followed, as Jim just said foods would be even more abundant.

waterfowl market hunting was done wit 100 pound punt guns. Pack'em in barrels and ship to the cities. The flocks disappeared pronto. Same with the pigeons. Wild protein is never a solution.

Donner party had poor leadership.

Falling and rolling block rifles.

Stories say they could pick them off one by one and hardly scare the herd. The animals could defend against wolves bears and Indians, but were helpless against long range weapons. What a time to be alive!

nothng to be sad about, the species is alive and well, and inhabiting areas with sufficient carrying capacity. there is nowhere to put historical numbers of them

They survive like penned animals. I'm grateful they do, but the loss of wildness of the huge herds that are their natural condition is deeply saddening. Just because the species exists does not mean they fully survive.

They are built and adapted to survive in herds that stretch across the horizon.

Have the buff been replaced with cattle? Sure, they're privately owned, but a rancher with a herd spread over 30 or 40,000 acres is gonna have a lot of losses or have a hell of a security team. Either way some enterprising folks get fed, through poaching or security team employment.

A herd of thirty to sixty million could hardly be killed out by human predation even with modern rifles considering the harvest could hardly have been more than a million a year. And that is a generous estimate on the kill. Need to look for another cause. There are plenty of accounts of dead bison covering the landscape. Indians died of introduced European disease. Bison overpopulated. Domestic cattle were introduced and driven into bison territory. Most likely cause was something like Texas tick fever or anthrax. Hunters couldn't have very well killed more than the natural reproduction.

Bison don’t calve enough to replace human predation

I don't know. I can sit here and think of quite a
few that prepare a goodly part of the year, spend
thousands of hard earned dollars on state of the
art equipment and location, but still can't put a
decent- sized game animal on the ground with
one shot. If they do manage to bring one down,
quite a few can't dress their quarry and reduce it
to edible portions without having to pay someone
to do it for them. Many more can't preserve their
harvest for later consumption.

All of this with no real pressure to bring home
what may be the only thing to eat for days
while competing with others for that same
bite of food

I dare say that thirty million (low estimate) would calve five to seven million (another low estimate) per year. Reckon humans were killing that many?

Why do you capitalize Gus, gus?