My cousin found correspondance between my family's early settlers in Weiland Texas back to kin in Tennessee they said that there were deer and buffalo in abundance.around 1850's. Do you think this was so?

So true

Writers like to embellish to makes their stories grandeur for fame and fortune, generational story tellers are just that story tellers and we all know how facts and information gets distorted from one teller of the story to the next.

Do ou think the Indians would have preferred Mathews or bowtech?

Read American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. It addresses a lot of these questions and tells you where the research came from. Very informative. Dan Flores' American Serengeti is also very good. Flores was one of the first academics to suggest that native Americans slaughtered buffalo to buy rifles and other goods from white traders.

I have read both books and highly recommend both as well. Flores is also occasionally on Rinella's Meateater podcast as well and is quite informative.

Well lets start with the first part referencing 30 to 60 million Buffalo. That number has no validity at all, how could it?

They were shot for their hides, bones and anything else of value but I've yet to confirm they were shot to starve out the natives.

The native Americans had no role in the disappearance of the bison from 1865-1880. I�m not saying they were perfect stewards of them or saints or anything else. But they were not the reason for their demise.

The timing alone would tell anyone that. They were fine for tens of thousands of years with the natives and then -bam- they were gone in 15 years because of them?

Uhhhh, no.

IDK about today, but in my day there were certainly no �white guilt� issues in my textbooks. The Founders, Texas Revolutionaries, and Confederates were only about a half-step below Jesus.

I read Rinella's book recently and am still working my way through Flores's. Flores's book is an interesting read, even though I disagree with a lot of his stances, especially considering feral horse herds. He's on the side that feral horse herds should be allowed to roam the plains because evolutionary/fossil evidence suggests that horses evolved in North America and migrated to Europe. Using that same train of thought, though, you could argue that cave bears and steppe lions should be reintroduced, should you be able to clone one from fossilized DNA. Horses went extinct in North America for a reason; reintroduction is an anthropological influence on the ecosystem. While we do that all the time, doing so and claiming it's the restoration of the natural order is contradictory.

That's all off-topic, sorry, but yes they're very interesting books worth reading. I'm a young world theorist, and don't believe in speciation, which much of the book deals with, but there's lots in there worth reading. Flores certainly let his personal views flavor the text, but its his book to do with as he pleases and there's nothing wrong with that. Just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading it!

I don�t feel like arguing with you, so change �no� to �insignificant� or �infinitesimal� if you like.

I said large part of the buffalo trade not insignificant or infinitesimal. Romance if you want.

100% same page as you. Although short nose bears would be cool in LA
Camels where once native to North America also. I personally think once a species is gone from US it�s gone. Wolves, should of stayed gone. Wild horse, shot them, wild burro shot them, any invasive species on public land shot them.

I know I can�t be right on anything BOBO, but Native Americans were not responsible for the extirpation of the American Bison. Go off on any tangent you want, it will not change that fact.
P.S. They were never a �large� part of the trade.
P.S.S. Who do you think they were �trading� with/selling them to? Hint: white men. It was our market, not theirs.

100% same page as you. Although short nose bears would be cool in LA
Camels where once native to North America also. I personally think once a species is gone from US it�s gone. Wolves, should of stayed gone. Wild horse, shot them, wild burro shot them, any invasive species on public land shot them.

I�m not romanticizing anything. I�m staying on topic - the topic is who is responsible for the near-extinction of the American Bison.

As usual, you are now off on stuff like there being some sort of buffalo trade before Europeans and macaws
in New Mexico - neither of which has jack to do with the subject. Obviously, that trade before white men came along did not drive them to the brink of extinction or have any significant impact on their populations.

Seriously you are dense, Almost gone is not gone but Gone is gone, My view didn�t mention eradicating a native species. You can�t bring back species once it�s gown. If you bring in a non native species from another continent or country you are playing with fire.

The original Yellowstone wolf is GONE, thus the introduction of a debatable sub species that 30% bigger that�s playing with fire(example-Hydatid Disease/Echinococcus granulosus )

The current wild burros and wild horses are non native sub species, they should be gone from the public landscape.

Again You brought up a romanticized view that Native Indians had no part(and later changed to very little) part in the killing of bison from North America landscape... that�s false

[quote=BOBO the Clown]

Agree with all but the wolves. Though the white man played a role in the demise of the Buffalo mainly for monetary reasons, the wolf was targeted for trade and eradication to protect introduced live stock, this created a big void in the predator prey and balance of other smaller predators.

Many of the game animals in the U.S. today are not the same subspecies that were native to their areas. Deer, elk, sheep, pronghorn, mountain goat.
Many of the WTs we hunt in TX are re-stocks from different areas. A lot of mine were from KS.
We would all be sucking wind for hunting under your theory if �once it�s gone, keep it gone.�