Turtle Talk

Well, here is what the chief taxidermist, William Temple Hornaday, of the national museum did:

Buffalo can move fast: 35, 40 miles an hour; they can jump 6 feet vertically, and crash through thick brush, but Hornaday writes, “my horse carried me alongside my buffalo, and as he turned toward me I gave him a shot through the shoulder, breaking the fore leg and bringing him promptly to the ground.”

He shot the bull. After hobbling this giant, Hornaday went off to assist in the shooting of a cow…

I then rode back to the old bull. When he saw me coming he got upon his feet and a short distance, but was easily overtaken. He then stood at bay, and halting within 30 yards of him I enjoyed the rare opportunity of studying a live bull buffalo of the largest size on foot on his native heath. I even made an outline sketch of him in my note-book. Having studied his form and outlines as much as was really necessary, I gave him a final shot through the lungs, which soon ended his career.

So he shot him. Then he drew him. Then he killed him. Then he shot the rest of the herd. “We killed very nearly all we saw,” he wrote back to the Museum, “and I am confident there are not over thirty head remaining in Montana, all told. By this time next year the cowboys will have destroyed about all of this remnant. We got in our Exploration just in the nick of time, …”

Here is the article.