The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

But after all, the bison is not so big a fool as he looks. He can think; and he can learn. In 1886, when we were about to set out for Montana to try to find a few wild buffaloes for the National Museum, before the reckless cowboys could find, kill and waste absolutely the last one, a hilarious friend said: "Pshaw! You don't need to take any rifles! Just get a rusty old revolver, mount a good, sensible horse, ride right up alongside the lumbering old beasts, and shoot them down at arm's length." We went; but not armed with "a rusty old revolver." We found a few buffaloes, but ye gods! How changed they were from the old days! Although only two short years had elapsed since the terminal slaughter of the hundreds of thousands whose white skeletons then thickly dotted the Missouri-Yellowstone divide, they had learned fear of man, and also how to preserve themselves from that dangerous wild beast. They sought the remotest bad lands, they hid in low grounds, they watched sharply during every daylight hour, and whenever a man on horseback was sighted they were off like a bunch of racers, for a long and frantic run straight away from the trouble-maker. Even at a distance of two miles, or as far as they could see a man, they would run from him,--not one mile, or two, but five miles, or seven or eight miles, to another wild and rugged hiding-place. To kill the buffalo specimens that we needed, three cowboys and the writer worked hard for nearly three months, and it was all that we could do to outwit those man-scared bison, and to get near enough to them to kill what we required. Many a time, when weary from a long chase, I thought with bitter scorn of my friend with the rusty-old-revolver in his mind. No deer, mountain sheep, tiger, bears nor elephants,--all of which I have pursued (and sometimes overtaken!)--were ever more wary or keen in self- preservation than those bison who at last had broken out from under the fatal spell of herd security. I am really glad that this strange turn of Fortune's wheel gave me the knowledge of the true scope of the buffalo mind before the last chance had passed.