Tools of the Buffalo Hunter

[Ron LaClair]

 

[mtcurman]

Nice outfit! :bow:

 

[RickD]

Looks good Ron,very good

 

[hawk]

nice gear :thumbsup:

 

[longshot one]

Nice photo! Thanks for sharing.

 

[JayDee Flohr]

Cool photo and neat stuff but I just can't see a buff hunter carrying such a large heavy blade when a Russell skinner would of been better suited to the task.

 

[Enfield1]

That is beautiful! I love displays like that. Could you tell us about the rifle? It looks from the trigger guard to be an early model TC. .50?

 

[AZ Muzzle]

Beautiful set! :bow:

Thanks for sharing.

Mark B

 

[Ron LaClair]

Cool photo and neat stuff but I just can't see a buff hunter carrying such a large heavy blade when a Russell skinner would of been better suited to the task.

Try butchering a buffalo sometime, I think you'll want somethin bigger than a Russell skinner... :wink:

 

[Ron LaClair]

That is beautiful! I love displays like that. Could you tell us about the rifle? It looks from the trigger guard to be an early model TC. .50?

It's a .54cal Greenriver Leeman Plains rifle, I bought it new in 72.

This was on it's first hunt for elk in Montana. That's a Pine Marten I'm holding that I trapped in a pole set.

 

[JayDee Flohr]

Try butchering a buffalo sometime, I think you'll want somethin bigger than a Russell skinner..

You don't have the market cornered on butchering buff or other large game. I've done many as have others. Just because the original knife this one is patterned from was in a beaded sheath doesn't mean it was used in the manner described.
When the term "Buffalo Hunter" is used, one generally thinks of the ones who about wiped the buffs off the planet. The ones who shot and skinned 30 or so a day and left the animal to rot in the sun. They were only concerned with getting the hide off fast and easy. That knife you are depicting simply wouldn't work well in that type of situation. Sure, you can hang a big critter up with a loader and use that axe to do the job, good luck doing 30 in a day on the ground.

 

[Ron LaClair]

You don't have the market cornered on butchering buff or other large game. I've done many as have others. Just because the original knife this one is patterned from was in a beaded sheath doesn't mean it was used in the manner described.
When the term "Buffalo Hunter" is used, one generally thinks of the ones who about wiped the buffs off the planet. The ones who shot and skinned 30 or so a day and left the animal to rot in the sun. They were only concerned with getting the hide off fast and easy. That knife you are depicting simply wouldn't work well in that type of situation. Sure, you can hang a big critter up with a loader and use that axe to do the job, good luck doing 30 in a day on the ground.

Just to set the record straight the beaded sheath on the website was not what the replica knife was carried in. It is displayed to show the early use of a shoulder strap carry.

The "Hide Hunters" had no need for a big knife to butcher the buffalo, they only took hides and tongues. Other buffalo hunters that also took the meat did have need for large heavy knives to help with the butchering process. The fact that these big knives were made and used and the many original drawings and sketches showing big knives being worn and carried confirms that they were indeed used in such a manner.

 

[Ron LaClair]

A big knife can do small jobs as well as big jobs... :grin:

 

[rkmeyer]

Very nice outfit NWTF thanks for the pix. :thumbsup:
Dusty :wink:

 

[JayDee Flohr]

The fact that these big knives were made and used and the many original drawings and sketches showing big knives being worn and carried confirms that they were indeed used in such a manner.

That's all fine and dandy except how does it prove that this style was known as a "Buffalo Skinner" as you state on your web site? What documentation are you using?
Hanson's book, The Frontier Scout and Buffalo hunters sketchbook shows good examples of the knives used by buff hunters. No where in any of my reference are knives like yours shown being used to skin anything. If you've used a large knife like that very much, you'd realize how worthless it would be for skinning.

As a side note, you call this a buffalo knife and your web site shows the sheath right under the original with the caption, Original Indian Beaded Buffalo Knife Sheath. Kind of makes one believe it from the knife.

 

[Ron LaClair]

This knife is a copy of the knife in Madison Grants book "The Knife in Homespun America" A picture of the original is on the website. In the book it is depicted as a butcher knife, and I'm sure it wasn't for butchering chickens.

There are several knife makers today that are making copys of "Camp Knives" that are sometimes called Buffalo knives, because they were used during that time period.

Large knives WERE used on buffalo, one example is in David A. Dary's book "The Buffalo Book" On page 116 there is a drawing by M.S. Garretson titled "Hide Hunters at work" It shows a man standing over a buffalo holding a very large knife which appears to be every bit as large as the one in Grants book.

As for using large knives for skinning, I have done so and they are not as useless as you might think...especially on large animals such as buffalo and moose. Where they really shine is in the actual butchering process. Separating the animal into pieces small enough to pack out. You may be able to do the same with an ax or hawk but the longer cutting edge of a big heavy knife does it much better.

Dennis Miles once told me that at an AMM event he skinned and cut on a buffalo carcass with his big HB Camp knife and that it cut circles around the smaller knives. That may not have been his exact words but I got the impression that he was impressed with what a big knife could do on a large animal.

I once shot a large bull moose (with a flintlock) 300yds from the river. It took a day and a half for my partner and I to skin and boned out the meat, put it in grain bags and packed it to the river to load into two canoes for the 35mi river trip. My regret on that trip was that I had to leave the heavy hide which weighed close to 200lb. The meat and horns was all the canoes could carry without swamping.

I used several knives in the process but the knife that did the lions share of the work was a very BIG knife.

 

[Ron LaClair]

As a side note, you call this a buffalo knife and your web site shows the sheath right under the original with the caption, Original Indian Beaded Buffalo Knife Sheath. Kind of makes one believe it from the knife.

It's supposed to be an example of an early sheath with a shoulder strap

The web guy took the liberty to give his own interpretation of a Buffalo Knife sheath, which it is not. ....we'll have to remedy that.

 

[chance]

Great looking outfit!! I am going on a buffalo hunt in the fall you are welcome to send me that outfit to use.

 

[JayDee Flohr]

Tell you what Ron, you and I will never be in agreement on it's use but it's been an enlightening debate.
I'm sure it's a finely crafted piece though. :thumbsup:
Take care.

 

[LaBonte]

When the term "Buffalo Hunter" is used, one generally thinks of the ones who about wiped the buffs off the planet.

Well that's how you may think of it, but the robe and tongue trade which started in the 1830's and the somewhat later meat trade (the trade that Biffalo Bill got his moniker in) started well before the hide hunter's period (1870's)and had a huge impact on the buffalo - the robe trade in particular since most were calves and cows. By the mid 1840's there are several primary resources that show that buffalo hunting had had a big impact: no buffalo within 500 miles of St Louis, Bent's Fort closed in the mid-1840's due to lack of buffalo, etc.
As to the use of big knives, not only did HBC and others start making the larger knives specifically for the trade, but the Ciboleros, Spanish/mixed blood buffalo hunters of New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas, all used large knives for butchering - one is shown in The Fur Trade Cutlery Sketchbook. No most were probably not used for skinning per se, but for butchering, a major trade for many years before the so-called hide trade was instituted - a trade that finished off the herds, whose numbers had already been heavily impacted by not only hunters, but by disease, the railroads, and emigrants.
As Ron noted re: Dennis Miles, such big knives neither need to be heavy or awkward - most period knives even when big are not that heavy, and once one gets used to them, they can and will generally cut rings (pun intended) around smaller knives except in special cases.