The Right Tool: Following up a Wounded Wood Bison bull with a Double Rifle (Article)

I arrowed a huge wood bison bull, put 2 right through his ribs and he was done but still moving so I got another chance through a small laneway in the trees and decided to shoulder shoot him on a perfect broadside. I drove the arrow through the on side shoulder right up to the fletch and he took great exception to this shot. He wheeled dropped his head, up went his tail and he was coming in full blown charge, he made 4 jumps stopped wavered a bit and fell over dead. I DID have a buddy covering my butt with his 416 but we never needed it. The nice thing about a bow is they don't spook if you are a little stealthy, his running mate, another big bull, actually put the run on us twice after the first 2 arrows. Or I should say we moved off post haste finding discretion to be the finer part of valor when #2 bull started making very bad signs towards us like snorting, stamping and pawing the ground and little rushes at us. We moved off into thicker trees out of direct sight and that's when they moved across our fronts through the narrow laneway and I poked him one last time. We then had to play with his buddy for another 10 minutes until we could actually claim my prize, all very exhilarating. We finally had to dump a 416 into the dirt at his feet to get him to move off, they seemed to have a very close bond, yelling and throwing sticks only solicited more and more aggressive behavior from his still standing buddy, however the sound and flying frozen dirt from the 416 made him lose interest and we were able to claim my prize and get to work on him.
I shot another one at the request of the owner for a donation to a dinner. The previous years kill had been a total fiasco so I was requested to do this for a clean kill (I have a reputation of being a decent shot among my circle of friends and associates). I used my .375 H&H (THE TRUE KING) and thumped him right behind the ear at about 100 mtrs trotting quartering away for a perfect clean kill, zero wasted meat and the rest of the herd moved off without incident. This was a high pressure situation as I had an entourage of about 10 spectators, what with friends of his, meat inspectors and veterinarians. All I have to say is "Thank you God for guiding my bullet". I looked like a hero and my reputation remained intact.
These truly are our largest land mammal in North America and are as dangerous as Cape Buff if you play with them and/or put holes in the wrong place and follow up too close.
The worst animal I have ever taken for being difficult to determine a vital shot on was by far my musk ox. They are just a huge ball of hair that hangs to the ground and in a foot of snow you can't even see a hoof to find a front leg. Of course when attempting to arrow one you can't just plunk one somewhere in the front and hope to break something or hit vitals you must choose your shot wisely, very, very difficult !!!
 
bearkilr said:
It seems to be the dead one's that are the toughest. The true definition of pain is getting kicked in the nuts by a 2000 lb bull after a headshot and proper bleeding while he's hanging from a front end loader. :D

Their nerves keep twitching for several minutes after death, more so than most other animals.
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Geez...maybe that's where those zombie movies get their inspiration from!
 
c-fbmi said:
I arrowed a huge wood bison bull, put 2 right through his ribs and he was done but still moving so I got another chance through a small laneway in the trees and decided to shoulder shoot him on a perfect broadside. I drove the arrow through the on side shoulder right up to the fletch and he took great exception to this shot. He wheeled dropped his head, up went his tail and he was coming in full blown charge, he made 4 jumps stopped wavered a bit and fell over dead. I DID have a buddy covering my butt with his 416 but we never needed it. The nice thing about a bow is they don't spook if you are a little stealthy, his running mate, another big bull, actually put the run on us twice after the first 2 arrows. Or I should say we moved off post haste finding discretion to be the finer part of valor when #2 bull started making very bad signs towards us like snorting, stamping and pawing the ground and little rushes at us. We moved off into thicker trees out of direct sight and that's when they moved across our fronts through the narrow laneway and I poked him one last time. We then had to play with his buddy for another 10 minutes until we could actually claim my prize, all very exhilarating. We finally had to dump a 416 into the dirt at his feet to get him to move off, they seemed to have a very close bond, yelling and throwing sticks only solicited more and more aggressive behavior from his still standing buddy, however the sound and flying frozen dirt from the 416 made him lose interest and we were able to claim my prize and get to work on him.
I shot another one at the request of the owner for a donation to a dinner. The previous years kill had been a total fiasco so I was requested to do this for a clean kill (I have a reputation of being a decent shot among my circle of friends and associates). I used my .375 H&H (THE TRUE KING) and thumped him right behind the ear at about 100 mtrs trotting quartering away for a perfect clean kill, zero wasted meat and the rest of the herd moved off without incident. This was a high pressure situation as I had an entourage of about 10 spectators, what with friends of his, meat inspectors and veterinarians. All I have to say is "Thank you God for guiding my bullet". I looked like a hero and my reputation remained intact.
These truly are our largest land mammal in North America and are as dangerous as Cape Buff if you play with them and/or put holes in the wrong place and follow up too close.
The worst animal I have ever taken for being difficult to determine a vital shot on was by far my musk ox. They are just a huge ball of hair that hangs to the ground and in a foot of snow you can't even see a hoof to find a front leg. Of course when attempting to arrow one you can't just plunk one somewhere in the front and hope to break something or hit vitals you must choose your shot wisely, very, very difficult !!!
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WOW!! Just...WOW!! That must've been quite a sphincter-tightening moment when he charged! How close did you have to get to arrow him through and through?
 
The 2 rib shots were broadside at about 40-45 mtrs, both went right through and I found my arrows after, and the through-the-shoulder shot was at about 30 mtrs. This was a 70 lb Carbon 4 Runner bow and Carbon Express arrows with Satellite conventional chisel cut with razor insert broadheads.
 
Thanks for sharing that Doug, haven't met many folks (one) who have arrowed a Bison. Good shooting, I know the feeling. I was very concerned I was going to screw this shot up, as I couldn't see a thing and it was a whole lots of piecing together where everything was from glimpses despite being only a handful of yards away. Worst nightmare was going after it and just making a bigger mess with pressure on, but he dropped on the spot and the educated guess proved accurate (thank goodness).
 
So is it a myth that the buffalo were all slaughtered? I've been doing some reading lately and a few things have stuck in my mind. David Thompson wrote that in the late 1700's the plains Indian population crashed due to disease, he also wrote that wolves were agressively hunted on horseback to use their pelts in trade and were greatly reduced. Certainly removing 2 or the main predators would have allowed the buffalo population to expand rapidly. Then I was watching "Unforgiven" and the barber mentions that the billiards table was burned for firewood in '78.

So an over populated buffalo population combined with hard winters could certainly have lead to a disease outbreak.

Is it even mathematically possible for the buffalo to have been shot off in a few years? It would have taken hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition to do so. Something on the scale of the US Civil War, in which several million men were mobilized. By contrast, the hide hunters numbered in the thousands (maybe).
 
I certainly believe it was man's fault, the scale of the slaughter was completely unthinking, and unsustainable. It was also used as a tool to push the natives off the plains. Try and picture what that pile of skulls represents in whole buffalo for volume, it's almost unfathomable, and that's just one of a plethora of slaughter operations.

7BA70B1C-DA76-494D-9F5E-BDFCCD696741-20603-00001160A0005B1A_zps7a206ec8.jpg
 
Ardent said:
I certainly believe it was man's fault, the scale of the slaughter was completely unthinking, and unsustainable. It was also used as a tool to push the natives off the plains. Try and picture what that pile of skulls represents in whole buffalo for volume, it's almost unfathomable, and that's just one of a plethora of slaughter operations.

7BA70B1C-DA76-494D-9F5E-BDFCCD696741-20603-00001160A0005B1A_zps7a206ec8.jpg
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I've heard numerous versions as to the origin of this photo so I'm not sure what is true but most seem to agree that this pile of skulls was not a result of only hunted bison. No doubt man laid a serious hurting on the bison and that hunting was an effective means of Indian control as well but whether man directly caused their demise or not is not quite so clear I don't think. These bison skulls were destined to be ground into fertilizer and were collected across the prairie and brought to the railhead..
 
It was most certainly done by man and it was encouraged by the US army as a weapon against the native people. The buffalo hunters were given all the ammo they wanted, as much as they needed.

'78 was when Sitting Bull came to Canada? IIRC the US sent up boxcars of aid to deal with him and his people. This "aid" consisted of ammo. The US were fighting a war of extermination against a violent renegade and his band of warriors who had a few short years before wiped out Custer. They viewed him as a criminal who was to be returned. It was an international incident.
 
Dogleg said:
The bison population crash occurred at almost the exact same time as rinderpest killed nearly everything in Africa. I can't be the only one who wonders about that.
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I forgot all about that, IIRC they think the Italians inadvertently introduced it in the Horn of Africa in the late 1880's and it spread rapidly from there.

I wonder how the other NA animals fare as far as rinderpest goes, the pronghorn and elk also crashed supposedly due to hunting. Sheep seem to die from everything. And Whitetail were very scarce for a while.
 
klaus enuff said:
It was most certainly done by man and it was encouraged by the US army as a weapon against the native people. The buffalo hunters were given all the ammo they wanted, as much as they needed.

'78 was when Sitting Bull came to Canada? IIRC the US sent up boxcars of aid to deal with him and his people. This "aid" consisted of ammo. The US were fighting a war of extermination against a violent renegade and his band of warriors who had a few short years before wiped out Custer. They viewed him as a criminal who was to be returned. It was an international incident.
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Do you have a source that documents the US Gov't giving away HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of rounds circa 1880?
 
I will quote from my copy of "Across the Medicine Line, the Epic Confrontation Between Sitting Bull and the North West Mounted Police", by C. Frank Turner. It is an interesting look into the times and also the early days of the NWMP. But I digress.

"...the U.S. Government itself was equally unhappy at the prospects of continually dealing with thousands of warriors who would be in a position to mount hit-and-run attacks from the north upon the boundary settlements and retreat to a sanctuary that would be out of bounds to U.S. pursuers. This would lead to a series of international incidents that neither Ottawa nor Washington was anxious to foment...."

"...the Americans, in their concern, most co-operatively waived the customs regulations to allow passage to Fort Benton of eight train carloads of boxes - each box was three feet long and two feet deep and was marked, "Merchandise - Canadian Government." The merchandise? Emergency supplies of ammunition for the NWMP..."

As to the buffalo hunters being given ammuniton I can not recall the title but it was of an actual hunters experience. Sorry I can not provide a source for you to check.

And the picture of the skulls? Those were collected after, most of the meat was left to rot as the hunters were after just the hides.
 
Where there enough wagons, horses, oxen, teamsters, etc to transport the ammunition across country from the train station to where ever the buffalo were?

Fort Benton is also in Montana, why would customs regulations need to be waived? Also, I dont think the railway even reached Fort Benton at that time, it was a steamboat stop.

Could it actually be that 8 wagon loads of "merchandise" went from Fort Benton to Fort Walsh? 8 wagons is far less than 8 train car loads.
 
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Very interesting story and glad to hear the poachers were caught.
Speaking about bison and caliber, does anybody know wich caliber was mostly used and under wich circumstances back then?
 
Dogleg said:
This is interesting.

http://www.petersenshunting.com/2012/09/04/was-the-buffalo-nearly-hunted-to-near-extinction/
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That was interesting no doubt, and well written, though I have trouble agreeing with some of it. I believe the hide numbers would be only a fraction of the overall kills, the effort wasn't made on the vast majority as they likely had neither the means to preserve a couple hundred pound hide nor the will to transport it or go to the work. I suspect far more would have been shot for simple destruction than commercial hunting, as in the trains examples, with no hide numbers accounting for them. The plains Bison also migrated as I understand, and the violent disruption of their routes to prime feed and water by things like the shooting railways could easily have caused an extraordinary population collapse. At the very least a massive disruption in breeding, as I see with this small herd I fly over daily when they are pressured.

Finally, I do very much believe as the article mentions a domestic infectious agent could be responsible, likely from domestics cows such as the examples he gave. That is still very much human fault, though through a different mechanism to be sure than shooting. I can easily buy that the shooting didn't do in the plains Bison alone, but would have a very hard time believing humans weren't the ultimate seed of its demise.
 
MiG25 said:
Where there enough wagons, horses, oxen, teamsters, etc to transport the ammunition across country from the train station to where ever the buffalo were?

Fort Benton is also in Montana, why would customs regulations need to be waived? Also, I dont think the railway even reached Fort Benton at that time, it was a steamboat stop.

Could it actually be that 8 wagon loads of "merchandise" went from Fort Benton to Fort Walsh? 8 wagons is far less than 8 train car loads.
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Sounds like you have some questions. Don't ask me to do your homework for you, if you want to find out if the author was wrong and confused train cars with wagons then do your research and prove it wrong. It could make your bones as a legit historian.

While leafing through the book I also came across some interesting numbers regarding the buffalo. One number off the top of my head was that the metis were known to shoot up to 800 in a day. I highly recommend reading this book, there is a reason it stays on my bookshelf.

Very good article Dogleg. I can certainly see all the factors coming together to do in the buffalo.
 
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