Notwithstanding the merciless war that had been waged against the buffalo for over a century by both whites and Indians, and the steady decrease of its numbers, as well as its range, there were several million head on foot, not only up to the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, but as late as the year 1870.  Up to that time the killing done by white men had been chiefly for the sake of meat, the demand for robes was moderate, and the Indians took annually less than one hundred thousand for trading.  Although half a million buffaloes were killed by Indians, half-breeds, and whites, the natural increase was so very considerable as to make it seem that the evil day of extermination was yet far distant.

But by a coincidence which was fatal to the buffalo, with the building of three lines of railway through the most populous buffalo country there came a demand for robes and hides, backed up by an unlimited supply of new and marvellously accurate breech-loading rifles and fixed ammunition.  And then followed a wild rush of hunters to the buffalo country, eager to destroy as many head as possible in the shortest time.  For those greedy ones the chase on horseback was “too slow” and too unfruitful.  That was a retail method of killing, whereas they wanted to kill by wholesale.  From their point of view, the still-hunt or “sneak” hunt was the method par excellence.  If they could have obtained Gatling guns with which to mow down a whole herd at a time, beyond a doubt they would have gladly used them.

The still-hunt was seen at its very worst in the years 1871, 1872, and 1873, on the southern buffalo range, and ten years later at its best in Montana, on the northern.  Let us first consider it at its best, which in principle was bad enough.

The great rise in the price of robes which followed the blotting out of the great southern herd at once put buffalo-hunting on a much more comfortable and respectable business basis in the North than it had ever occupied in the South, where prices had all along been phenomenally low.

In Montana it was no uncommon thing for a hunter to invest from $1,000 to $2,000 in his “outfit” of horses, wagons, weapons, ammunition, provisions, and sundries.

One of the men who accompanied the Smithsonian Expedition for Buffalo, Mr. James McNaney, of Miles City, Montana, was an ex-buffalo banter, who had spent three seasons on the northern range, killing buffalo for their robes, and his standing as a hunter was of the best.  A brief description of his outfit and its work during its last season on the range (1882-’83) may fairly be taken as a typical illustration of the life and work of the still-hunter at its best.  The only thing against it was the extermination of the buffalo.