A New Episode of Distinctly Montana Stories Podcast: The Bison Hunters

By the 1880s, killing bison had become a career. The government encouraged it, the market rewarded it, and a certain class of Western men took up the work with a creativity that is hard to describe and harder to forget.

The newest episode of Distinctly Montana Stories follows these men into the field and studies their trade the way they studied it. There was the question of where to place a shot so a wounded animal would mill and cough instead of bolting and spooking the herd. There was the matter of which animals paid best, and the grim economies of a hide that might freeze overnight or bloat in the sun. There was a market for tongues in the fashionable restaurants back East, and for "buffalo hump" on a Western Christmas table. And when a hunter caught a hot streak and his rifles grew too hot to fire, with no water for miles, there was the question of what a truly practical man would use to cool the barrels.

The piece, written by Joseph Shelton, traces all of this toward a single spring morning in Montana in 1883, when a crew of hunters rode out to begin another season as they always had. What they found waiting for them on the prairie put an end to the whole business, and gave rise, within months, to a stranger one.

"The Bison Hunters" is available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

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