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Filming the Mexican buffalo episode got me thinking about the years I spent working on my book, American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon. And thinking about that got me thinking about this photo, which is perhaps my favorite hunting photo of all time. It was taken by a photographer named L.A. Huffman, who worked in eastern Montana during the years when that beautiful country was in the autumn of its frontier phase. In the winter of 1881/’82, he went out to photograph the last big push of the commercial buffalo hide hunters, who had been busily exterminating buffalo on the southern and northern plains for the previous decade. These men were making good money, or at least some of them were, and they gave little thought to where their industry might be headed once they killed the last of their resource. There are reliable historic reports of a herd of 75,000 buffalo that crossed the Yellowstone River in ’81 or ‘82 outside of Miles City, near where this photo was taken, and so many hide hunters fell on the herd that there were as few as a couple thousand animals (some say zero) left by the time they reached the Canadian border a few days later. The hide hunters operated with such ignorance about the finiteness of their resource that they really had no idea what they’d accomplished once it was all over. Some hide hunters hung around Miles City after the last herds were killed, convinced that more buffalo were certain to show up sooner or later. Within a few years, though, they had to cede the fact that it was all over.
Whatever negative things you want to think about the commercial hide hunters, and there are plenty of options, you can’t deny that they lived colorful and fascinating existences. This camp photo shows a lot about their lives while they were out hunting on the plains. This man is living in a dug-out that he’s burrowed into the side of a dry wash. The opening is capped by a collection of buffalo hides. Much of the hunter’s food is scattered about. A rib cage off a buffalo is lying in the dirt beyond the axe in the foreground. He’s got some extracted buffalo tongues laid out on the hides that form the doorway. Also, the head of a bighorn ram. To the right of the ram is a frozen buffalo embryo that must have been plucked from the uterus of a killed cow. While it is widely accepted that Indians relished the flesh of unborn buffalo calves, whether this hunter hauled the thing home as food or as a decoration is something that we’ll never know. It is just one question out of dozens that I’d love to ask him if I could be so lucky as to share his filthy, lonely camp.
Wow, I didn’t notice the calf until I clicked on the photo. Pretty morbid. I enjoyed the book very much.
Great Photo, I hope we as hunters have learned from our history’s past.
I was reading the other night this book called The Beast In The Garden by David Baron. He has a small section in there that related to this in some way. He points out that the American landscape is trying to make a comeback as an American frontier via preserving open spaces and reforming old ones from post-development. Even though this is not the pristine frontier of yester year movement toward ‘taking it back’ is happening. Even though some well meaning business man wants to ‘develop over yonder’. There was also some indication of the boundary between the two habitats of wildlife and urban life: named a ecotone. Reading the passage, there is a transitory state in the midst of building on undeveloped land but spending money indirectly/directly to preserve areas that are around its boundaries. So this co-mingling causes the effect of skewing the outlook or defining marker of Nature definition as based on this reforming of habitat boundaries. Wilderness co-habiting with civilization, the subsequent spilling over of wildlife when people in their mind think its going to stay put where it is and not cross over that imaginary line in the sand or their heads.
As for hide hunters you have to look at it with a little perspective. Maybe a lot of self medicating of drugs to help facilitate dreamy time or the imagination of a crazy person? If they immigrated from a foreign land by hook or crook then came to a place that wasn’t eat up with disease, refuse, overpopulation by man and animal, murder or mayhem you could understand why they might breathe a little easier and try to make as much bank as they can while they could. Over extending resources back in the mother land was probably what sent some of them packing. Most were petty criminals shipped over. If your life was crap and you landed somewhere that wasn’t what you previously endured you’d be hooting and a shooting too. Haahahaha.. Get while getting is good.
What they probably made was no more than a big tip to a waitress in our time. You could ask yourself….exactly what did relative hunter spend his moolaa on? Drinks? Women? Food? Guns? I am pretty sure there was a fair share of firewater going around with lots of wenches to be had. God rest there merry souls. I had a acquaintance that had a quote from somewhere, mostly a creepy song, that stated ‘Monotony is a time machine.’ The precept of time is choking the life out of people. People don’t live seasonal that much unless its controlled. Those dirt daubers back then probably did a variety of activities that kept them busy but time wasn’t slipping by them. I read Calamity Jane’s letters to that daughter of hers. She was pitiful. She’d take about how time would drag on and she thought about suicide especially later in life after her wild times and blindness was setting in. She was filled with a lot of promises to that child that she would never keep. Now its like your 16 then boom, you’re 60. The question follows. What happened and where did it all go? That is why the family unit doesn’t last. Life, time and demand for keeping busy tears it apart. Everyone is a relative stranger. That goes along the lines of compacting work and life. Its not free to breathe or just run. That hide hunter might would have adapted but the likelihood he would a brought a bottle of whiskey and said ’shove off you bugger’ is like a biblical prophecy of old. There might have been fisticuffs or gun fire. My all time favorite is the concept of the Indian strap match. You have to be smart to figure that one out.
I was watching some random show the other night. I don’t think it was yours but the commentator of the show was stating there was talk of legislation to give back to the buffalo its territory because there was also something on there about water rights, the farm bill? I don’t remember.
Seeing how it is snowing there I pondered the question on what said hunter would do if he were in the heat like you were and he didn’t have a residence to go to with his meat? I think you said that meat would quickly putrefy or go bad because of the heat? He probably didn’t have to many problems with the cold but I don’t know if he had the option of riding back into ‘Dodge City’ because it was right up the road? Meat in tow.
That would be an interesting set of events to counter if you thought of what it was he had to do to keep it wasting due to the conditions he was hunting under. I bet everything he made that was attached to the hole in the wall he packed on a horse. I think I see a saddle and a nice one to boot.
That structure looks like a burrow or den. Sometimes you just have to think like an animal because some of them can build rather nice homes. I would wonder if he had this because if someone is looking at the area he would want to blend in. I bet there was a lot of murder and stealing of hides and meat they collected. Hey….that camp doesn’t look filthy. It looks pretty damn organized. He’s got it all laid out. Haaahaaa.
Thanks for the article. It is always tempting to judge history by the facts that we have now, and that’s a mistake. You need to have the historical perspective of what they knew and what they thought to understand why they did what they did. It was wrong, but they didn’t know exactly how big the hers were. They seemed to be inexhaustible, but they were wrong.
Another point, hunters usually are judged by the the wrongs have been committed by previous generations of hunters. But if you look at the facts of the story where there were approximately 100 buffalo left and now there are half a million, you have to conclude that the conservation efforts by hunters, and for hunters is a huge success. Without the efforts of hunters, most wildlife in America would be extinct right now.
I’m going to have to keep this photo handy to look at and bring me back to reality every time I dream of being mountain man / subsistance hunter. Pretty cool, Steve.
The hunter of yesterday may have been more short sighted than hunters of today but they are by far more rugged
I would not compare what we as hunters do today with this industry.