The Buffalo Hunters
As the railroads pushed across the Great Plains they encountered problems with the Plains Indians, the natural terrain, and the great herds of American Bison, estimated to number up to 60 million at their peak. Bison threatened the railroads in many ways, including potentially damaging the tracks or equipment should they attempt to cross the tracks without giving a train sufficient room to stop. The railroads wanted the bison removed. In this they were supported by the army, which believed that the best way to drive the western tribes to reservations was to eliminate the means of their survival on the plains.
The railroads hired buffalo hunters who killed as many of the buffalo as they could. Buffalo meat fed railroad workers and buffalo hides were shipped east where they provided a stronger leather that was used primarily for the drive belts of machinery in factories and meatpacking houses. The tales of buffalo hunters became legendary in the east as the new (and last) true American frontiersmen. This led enterprising railroad supervisors to devise a new form of recreation for those in the east who had never seen a buffalo. Their plan would simultaneously reduce the buffalo herds and enhance railroad passenger revenues.
Passenger trains had long been equipped with firearms for self-defense in the case of Indian attack, and when passengers on the trains began using them to shoot at passing buffalo herds a new form of American vacation was born. Buffalo hunt excursion trains departed from several western towns, armed with passengers whom had paid for the privilege. When buffalo herds were encountered these trains slowed to match the speed of the herd, or stopped if the herd wasn’t moving. Drivers accompanied the train to use gunfire to set the herd in the desired motion and direction. The excursionists climbed to the roof of the cars, or aimed through the windows.
The “hunters” then opened fire on the herd, and continued firing as long as the herd was in range, allowing the passengers to return to the east claiming to have killed a buffalo. On rare occasion the trains stopped to allow the collection of trophies or the posing for photographs. For the most part they did not. After concluding it was safe from Indian attack most of the hides were harvested for shipment east, most of the meat remained where it lay on the plains. The bones were collected after the meat rotted away, to be used as an ingredient in fertilizer.
By the turn of the century the massive buffalo herds of the Great Plains had been reduced to less than 300 animals living in the wild. Conservation efforts began about that time. By the beginning of the twenty-first century the number of American Buffalo in the United States had reached about 500,000 on private lands and around 30,000 on publicly owned land. Buffalo hunting began again in the late twentieth century, in controlled hunts on private lands, with many guaranteeing their customers an opportunity to kill one of the animals, which were designated the National Mammal of the United States in 2016.