All my life I’ve had doubts about the notion that the white man killed all the buffalo.
Some wildlife groups state the professional buffalo hunters decimated the bison. However, simple math may prove otherwise. Holt explains that a study by Dr. William Temple Hornaday, 1889, reveals records of animals shot and hides traded show the number of animals killed has never exceeded the natural increase. “Estimates show bison numbers of around 65 million. Every year hundreds of thousands of buffalo were harvested. If they were fossils or statues and you took hundreds of thousands from 21 to 88 million every year, then in 21 to 440 years you’d get rid of them all. But what do tens of millions of bison have every year? They have millions of calves,” Stoneberg Holt explains.
This led her to become very curious as to why bison numbers plummeted in the late 19th century when research shows professional hunters’ extermination of all buffalo was a myth with no factual basis. She discovered two candidates for a death-by-disease theory: Texas tick fever in the Montana area and anthrax in the Nebraska area.
Another item that doesn’t seem to be talked about much, that in the late 1870’s the Cheyenne tribe killed roughly 275,000 bison which they sold the hides only. Further to that, the famous Canadian Metis lived off of the slaughter of Buffalo as a business, which included hide sales and processed meat (pemmican) which they sold by the ton.
Yes they did to decimate the native population.
how do you post jpg here?
No they didn’t.
And don’t forget bovine TB.
And don’t forget H5N1 … that the CDC has declared will kill tens of millions Americans this year if we don’t destroy millions of chickens and their eggs. Trump will need to shutter the economy again! And warp speed a fake vaccine. He will have no choice! He will be threatened with a tragic loss in his re-election bid … wait … what?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/food-and-drink/general/bird-flu-has-hit-california-dairies-so-hard-that-they-re-calling-it-covid-for-cows/ar-AA1waQb6
Perhaps it was COVID for Bison in the 1880’s … contracted from Canada goose droppings … that spelled DOOM for the Bison. What a shame ah, Dokktor Fauxci wasn’t there to SAVE millions of Bison lives …
It was written in a book by a British author in the 80’s that the last wild herd roaming the grasslands of southern Alberta had all been shot for for the fun of it one Sunday afternoon by natives.
Ever hear about “head smashed in buffalo jump” in Alberta? Didn’t need shot guns.
Yes.
Anthropologists examined the bottom of “head smashed in buffalo jump” and discovered that 80% of the bison carcasses were wasted.
No tool marks on the bones.
Another noble savages myth bites the dust.
Assuming the 65 million buffalo number is accurate. Here is a question: how many bullets and/or arrows were produced during those years? Given that arrows and bullets were made by hand at that point in time, my guess is that number is far less than the number of buffalo. So it would have been physically impossible for hunters to kill them all. They didn’t have enough bullets!! Doesn’t matter if it were native or European hunters, I highly doubt the numbers match.
Some one prove that white people made 65 million bullets and no one missed a shot and I can believe that white man killed the buffalo.
Again, I will note “head smashed in buffalo jump.” No bullets required.
Buffalo jumps only worked in rare circumstances. Dry Island for example only had 4 or 5 successful drives over thousands of years.
They had no influence on the bison population.
I’m pretty sure there were factories cranking out bullets in the 19th century.
Not before centre fire ammo came along. The bison were gone by 1880. That was still the black powder era.
What are you on about? The Springfield 1873 fired mass-produced metal centre-fire cartridges. So did the Springfield 1866.
“Assuming the 65 million buffalo number is accurate. Here is a question: how many bullets and/or arrows were produced during those years?”
How many buffalo farts were produced is the really important question.
The loss of all those beasts was the salvation of the environment./
I think consideration has to be given to FMD (Foot-And-Mouth) disease. There had been little information available about FMD relative to the 1800’s US other than there were confirmed cases in 1870. Since there was virtually no information concerning bison, they decided to do some tests to see if it could pass from cattle to bison. They did the testing on Plum Island and found the following:
Cattle can, indeed pass FMD to Bison. Bison, in turn can pass FMD to other Bison. In fact, the testing at Plum Island suggested that bison are very susceptible to FMD. Cattle cannot pass FMD to Elk. And Elk cannot pass FMD to other elk. Today, we have elk walking around. We do not have bison walking around. Cattle received an inoculation for FMD in the very early 1900’s.
I think Dr. Hornaday is on the right track.
Disease is the only logical conclusion you can draw to explain the desication of the continental bison herd.
Local herds were wiped out by hunting but millions? Never.
Read about this years ago in a long forgotten hunting magazine. When you consider buffalo population, pace of buffalo reproduction, people population, number of guns available, speed of bullet manufacture/shipping, railway shipping records (hides/bones were worth something at the time), there is no way people can kill off 65 million buffalo in the short time given. The buffalo would birth more young per year than people were capable of killing.
With all those evil deforesting methane belching bison gone “the planet was saved”. Bison no longer ate saplings or trampled down vegetation. The bald headed prairie receded. The tree line moved South and East until it reached too arid of a climate to grow.
An inconvenient fact I rub in the noses of the anti-cow fanatics.
I don’t know. . .
Where the buffalo go.
Only the buffalo know. . . .
Where the buffalo go.
Now do the myth that the indigenous people used EVERY part of the Bison they … “lovingly” … “mystically” … and “reverentially” slaughtered by simply wounding the great beast with an arrow and then chased its dying hulk till it stopped running.
We DO love our myths … don’t we?
I should also add that the horse manure about the passenger pigeon is another story that makes absolutely no sense. I expect that is was something like parrot fever that got into the gigantic flocks, not black powder shotguns that caused their end. I am also waiting for the next example of scientis being wrong and we find out that there is a small population of the sky rats alive and living in small flocks somewhere in the American south.
Every few years here in Michigan our DNR gets all permissive with hunting due to declining hunters and increasing car/deer accidents.
This year is the most permissive I’ve seen, with gun season going 4 weeks and another 4 week of gun/doe.
And then coinciding with those high herd numbers comes a year with just the perfect conditions to cause EHD, or blue tongue disease, causing massive deer deaths, in some areas up to 90%. Last time was 7-10 years ago.
It’s almost as if the herd numbers cycle year to year, and an event or two like that happened about the same time there were record (but normally sustainable) harvests of the buffalo.
I heard the US government killed, or sponsored the killing of, the millions of buffalo in their battle against the natives.