people who slaughter animals indiscriminately are advising us, we look after the elephants and the bulls with utmost care as a member of our family, she can go and advise the europeans and the americans to stop torturing animals
Bison hunting (
hunting of the
American bison, also commonly known as the
American buffalo) was an
activity fundamental to the economy and society of the
Plains Indians peoples who inhabited the
vast grasslands on the
Interior Plains of
North America, prior to the animal's near-extinction in the late nineteenth century. The species' dramatic decline was the result of
habitat loss due to the expansion of ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting practised by
non-indigenous hunters, increased indigenous hunting pressure due to non-indigenous demand for bison hides and meat (for example, the
pemmican used by the Hudson's Bay Company to provision its
fur brigades), and even cases of deliberate policy by settler governments to destroy the food source of the native Indian peoples during times of conflict.
19th century bison hunts and near extinction
Photo from the 1870s of a pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for
fertilizer.
In the 16th century, North America contained 25-30 million buffalo.
[6] Bison were hunted almost to
extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to a few hundred by the mid-1880s. They were hunted for their skins, with the rest of the animal left behind to decay on the ground.
[7] After the animals rotted, their bones were collected and shipped back east in large quantities.
[7]
Due to the roaming behavior of bison, their mass destruction came with relative ease to hunters. When one bison in a herd is killed, the other bison gather around the buffalo. Due to this pattern, the ability of a hunter to kill one bison often led to the destruction of a large herd of them.
[8]
The cause of this buffalo population crash is heavily debated by academics; some contend that indigenous peoples were responsible for just as much, if not more, of the bison extermination at this time. Because Indians adapted to the social changes that resulted from Euro-American arrival in the West, some Indian groups reinvented their style of hunting and thus drove the buffalo population down. Proponents of this view argue that Indians embraced the fur trade and adapted to bison hunting via horse, which drove the number of bison they could slaughter significantly up.
[9]
Commercial Incentives[edit]
For settlers of the
Plains region, bison hunting served as a way to increase their economic stake in the area. Trappers and traders made their living selling buffalo fur; in the winter of 1872-1873, more than 1.5 million buffalo were put onto trains and moved eastward.
[10] In addition to the potential profits from buffalo leather, which was commonly used to make machinery belts and army boots, buffalo hunting forced Natives to become dependent on beef from cattle.
General Winfield Scott, for example, reminded several
Arapaho chiefs at
Fort Dodge in 1867: "You know well that the game is getting very scarce and that you must soon have some other means of living; you should therefore cultivate the friendship of the white man, so that when the game is all gone, they may take care of you if necessary."
[11]
Commercial bison hunters also emerged at this time. Military forts often supported hunters, who would use their civilian sources near their military base. Though officers hunted bison for food and sport, professional hunters made a far larger impact in the decline of bison population.
[12] Officers stationed in
Fort Hays and Wallace even had bets in their "buffalo shooting championship of the world", between "Medicine Bill" Comstock and "
Buffalo Bill" Cody.
[11] Some of these hunters would engage in mass bison slaughter in order to make a living.
Military Involvement[edit]
The US Army sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds.
[13] The federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, to allow ranchers to range their cattle without competition from other bovines, and primarily to weaken the North American Indian population by removing their main food source and to pressure them onto the reservations during times of conflict.
[14][15] Without the bison, native people of the plains were often forced to leave the land or starve to death. One of the biggest advocates of this strategy was General
William Tecumseh Sherman. On June 26, 1869, the Army Navy Journal reported: "General Sherman remarked, in conversation the other day, that the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins."
[16] According to Professor David Smits: "Frustrated bluecoats, unable to deliver a punishing blow to the so-called "Hostiles,"unless they were immobilized in their winter camps, could, however, strike at a more accessible target, namely, the buffalo.That tactic also made curious sense, for in soldiers' minds the buffalo and the Plains Indian were virtually inseparable."
[16]
Native American Involvement[edit]
According to historian
Pekka Hämäläinen, a few Native American tribes also partly contributed to the collapse of the bison in the southern Plains.
[17] By the 1830s the
Comanche and their allies on the southern plains were killing about 280,000 bison a year, which was near the limit of sustainability for that region. Firearms and horses, along with a growing export market for buffalo robes and bison meat had resulted in larger and larger numbers of bison killed each year. A long and intense drought hit the southern plains in 1845, lasting into the 1860s, which caused a widespread collapse of the bison herds.
[17] In the 1860s, the rains returned and the bison herds recovered to a degree.
Railroad Involvement[edit]
After the
Pacific Railway Act of 1862, the west experienced a large boom in colonist population—and a large decline in bison population. As railways expanded, military troops and supplies were able to be transported more efficiently to the Plains region. Some railroads even hired commercial hunters to feed their laborers.
William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody, for example, was hired by the
Kansas Pacific Railroad for this reason. Hunters began arriving in masses, and trains would often slow down on their routes to allow for raised hunting. Men would either climb aboard the roofs of trains or fire shots at herds from outside their windows. As a description of this from
Harper's Weekly noted: "The train is 'slowed' to a rate of speed about equal to that of the herd; the passengers passengers get out fire-arms which are provided for the defense of the train against the Indians, and open from the windows and platforms of the cars a fire that resembles a brisk skirmish."
[18] The railroad industry also wanted bison herds culled or eliminated. Herds of bison on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time. Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding though hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. As a result, bison herds could delay a train for days.
[19]
Modern hunting[edit]
Hunting of wild bison is legal in some states and provinces where public herds require
culling to maintain a target population. In
Alberta, where one of only two continuously wild herds of bison exist in North America at
Wood Buffalo National Park, bison are hunted to protect disease-free public (reintroduced) and private herds of bison.
Montana[edit]
In Montana, a public hunt was reestablished in 2005, with 50 permits being issued. The Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Commission increased the number of tags to 140 for the 2006/2007 season. Advocacy groups claim that it is premature to reestablish the hunt, given the bison's lack of habitat and wildlife status in Montana.
Though the number is usually several hundred, up to more than a thousand bison from the
Yellowstone Park Bison Herd have been killed in some years when they wander north from the Lamar Valley of
Yellowstone National Park into private and state lands of
Montana. This hunting is done because of fears that the Yellowstone bison, which are often infected with
Brucellosiswill spread that disease to local domestic cattle.
Utah[edit]
The
State of Utah maintains two
bison herds. Bison hunting in
Utah is permitted in both the
Antelope Island Bison Herd and the
Henry Mountains Bison Herd though the licenses are limited and tightly controlled. A Game Ranger is also generally sent out with any hunters to help them find and select the right bison to kill. In this way, the hunting is used as a part of the wildlife management strategy and to help cull less desirable individuals.
Every year all the bison in the
Antelope Island Bison Herd are rounded up to be examined and vaccinated. Then most of them are turned loose again, to wander
Antelope Island but approximately 100 bison are sold at an auction, and hunters are allowed to kill a half dozen bison. This hunting takes place on
Antelope Island in December each year. Fees from the hunters are used to improve
Antelope Island State Park and to help maintain the bison herd.
Hunting is also allowed every year in the
Henry Mountains Bison Herd in
Utah. The
Henry Mountains herd has sometimes numbered up to 500 individuals but the
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has determined that the
carrying capacity for the
Henry Mountains Bison Herd is 325 individuals. Some of the extra individuals have been transplanted, but most of them are not transplanted or sold, so hunting is the major tool used to control their population. "In 2009, 146 public once-in-a-lifetime Henry Mountain bison hunting permits were issued."
[53] Most years, 50 to 100 licenses are issued to hunt bison in the
Henry Mountains.
Alaska[edit]
Bison were also reintroduced to Alaska in 1928, and both domestic and wild herds subsist in a few parts of the state.
[54][55] The state grants limited permits to hunt wild bison each year.
[56][57]
Mexico[edit]
In 2002 the United States government donated some buffalo calves from South Dakota and Colorado to the Mexican government for the reintroduction of bison to Mexico's nature reserves. These reserves included El Uno Ranch at Janos and Santa Elena Canyon,
Chihuahua, and Boquillas del Carmen,
Coahuila, which are located on the southern shore of the Rio Grande and the grasslands bordering Texas and New Mexico.
[58]
she can go and advise her european ba***ds
