The buffalo hunters and their rifles: image polishing and myth busting

Guns Magazine, August, 2006 by Mike Venturino

Several stereotypes are commonly applied to the professional buffalo hunters of the 1870s. They are thought of as dirty, ragged, scoundrels too lazy to work and too stupid to steal. There is also the vision of them as remorseless killers who would shoot anything for a dollar, at the same time being the epitome of the rugged American individual. The sort, who with rifle in hand faces the wilderness and is comfortable in it. Above all they are considered some of the world's best marksmen, expert with their big-bore, single-shot rifles.

No doubt they became dirty and ragged. A buffalo hunter's camp must have been one of the most vermin infested places imaginable, what with freshly removed bison skins pegged to the ground all around. In fact one story in Miles Gilbert's book Getting A Stand tells of a buffalo skinner who brushed his raw chapped lips with the back of his hand and the resulting infection nearly killed him. The smell in a camp also must have been indescribable. All that said, buffalo hunters are also known to have cleaned up body and clothes when re-entering civilization.

Hard Work Defined

Too lazy to work? Not many more occupations could have been as exhausting as living in tent camps for months on end with all the attendant chores of daily life such as cooking, cleaning up afterwards, gathering and chopping firewood, plus fleshing, drying, stacking, and transporting thousands of heavy hides. Too stupid to steal? What required more intelligence--swinging a pick in a mining camp or casting bullets over an open fire, rolling them into paper patches, and loading them in metallic cartridges for the big single-shot rifles?

Rugged individuals comfortable in the wilderness? No doubt some were, but there is also evidence of buffalo hunters being gregarious. They liked to gather at places like Adobe Walls or Fort Griffin, not only to resupply but also to socialize. Most of them were young and hardy, thriving on an outdoor life, but as they aged they ended up living in towns and cities. Often the daily dangers of their occupation--wild beasts, wilder weather extremes and hostile Indians--convinced many of them to take up "saner" jobs.

Best Marksmen

The world's best marksmen? Perhaps, but not always and certainly not all of them were such wonderful marksmen in the beginning of their hide hunting careers. John R. Cook in The Border And The Buffalo relates on his first day of hunting he fired a considerable number of cartridges without hitting a single beast. Upon returning to camp someone pointed out that his rifle's front sight was loose in its dovetail and about to fall off completely. Being a novice he hadn't noticed. Another time he told of again having trouble hitting the beasts. Then a companion pointed out that he was firing .44 cartridges in his .50 caliber rifle.

Certainly not all professional buffalo hunters started out as expert shots, but the simple fact must be if they stayed in the business, they had to evolve into such. Most of them also had to become expert reloaders for it just was not possible or economically feasible to rely on factory-produced cartridges all of the time. Traders' receipts still exist as do Sharps Rifle Co. factory records showing hunters bought quantities of lead, patching paper, cartridge cases, primers and reloading implements.

The Rifles

Two single-shot rifles ruled the plains with professional bison hunters. They were the Sharps Model 1874 and the Remington No. 1, otherwise known simply as the Rolling Block. Most assuredly some other types of rifles were also used such as Ballards, Maynards, and US Army "Trapdoor" Springfields. By all primary accounts left by bison hunters, the Sharps was tops with the Remington in distant second place.

The Sharps Model 1874 is legendary. In fact, it probably could set a record as being the world's best-known rifle made in the least numbers. Between its introduction (which was 1871 not 1874) and when the Sharps Company shut its doors in 1880 only about 6,500 were made as Sporting Rifles. Add to that figure target rifles, carbines, and military-styled rifles and the total still only comes to between 12,000 and 13,000.

Conversely, during the same time, the Remington factory was running 24 hours a day and sometimes producing as many as 1,600 No. 1 Rolling Blocks in that time. Remington's own catalog states that by 1878 they had made over 900,000 Rolling Blocks. A natural question here would be, "If Remington out-produced Sharps so much why were they in second place?" Because most of those 900,000 Rolling Blocks were military rifles. They were being used by armies around the planet from Sweden to Argentina and from the United States to China. Only a miniscule number of Rolling Blocks were being made as Sporting Rifles and "sent West."

So what was a typical buffalo hunter's rifle? In the beginning of the great hide hunt it would have been just about any one firing a slug big enough to penetrate a bison. But ... that was no mean feat considering a bull could top a ton on the hoof. Sharps made rifles in four bore sizes: .40, .44, .45, and .50, with a variety of cartridge lengths for each. Most of them were considered suitable for bison, but the ones most mentioned had at least a capacity of 70 grains of powder. The only archaeology done so far, which can prove exactly what calibers and cartridges were actually used by professional hunters, was at the site of the famous 1874 Adobe Walls trading post. The cartridge cases found there were .44-77, .44-90, .50-70, and .50-90.