The buffaloes still alive in a wild state are so very few, and have been so carefully “marked down” by hunters, it is possible to make a very close estimate of the total number remaining.  In this enumeration the small herd in the Yellowstone National Park is classed with other herds in captivity and under protection, for the reason that, had it not been for the protection afforded by the law and the officers of the Park, not one of these buffaloes would be living to-day.  Were the restrictions of the law removed now, every one of those animals would be killed within three months.  Their heads alone are worth from $25 to $50 each to taxidermists, and for this reason every buffalo is a prize worth the hunter’s winning.  Had it not been for stringent laws, and a rigid enforcement of them by Captain Harris, the last of the Park buffaloes would have been shot years ago by Vic.  Smith, the Rea Brothers, and other hunters, of whom there is always an able contingent around the Park.

In the United States the death of a buffalo is now such an event that it is immediately chronicled by the Associated Press and telegraphed all over the country.  By reason of this, and from information already in hand, we are able to arrive at a very fair understanding of the present condition of the species in a wild state.

In December, 1886, the Smithsonian expedition left about fifteen buffaloes alive in the bad lands of the Missouri-Yellowstone divide, at the head of Big Porcupine Creek.  In 1887 three of these were killed by cowboys, and in 1888 two more, the last death recorded being that of an old bull killed near Billings.  There are probably eight or ten stragglers still remaining in that region, hiding in the wildest and most broken tracts of the bad lands, as far as possible from the cattle ranches, and where even cowboys seldom go save on a round-up.  From the fact that no other buffaloes, at least so far as can be learned, have been killed in Montana during the last two years, I am convinced that the bunch referred to are the last representatives of the species remaining in Montana.

In the spring of 1886 Mr. B. C. Winston, while on a hunting trip about 75 miles west of Grand Rapids, Dakota, saw seven buffaloes—­five adult animals and two calves; of which he killed one, a large bull, and caught a calf alive.  On September 11, 1888, a solitary bull was killed 3 miles from the town of Oakes, in Dickey County.  There are still three individuals in the unsettled country lying between that point and the Missouri, which are undoubtedly the only wild representatives of the race east of the Missouri River.

On April 28, 1887, Dr. William Stephenson, of the United States Army, wrote me as follows from Pilot Butte, about 30 miles north of Rock Springs, Wyoming: 

“There are undoubtedly buffalo within 50 or 60 miles of here, two having been killed out of a band of eighteen some ten days since by cowboys, and another band of four seen near there.  I hear from cattlemen of their being seen every year north and northeast of here.”