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Part 5: The Sharpshooter's Stand
Description
Before sunrise, Josiah Wright Mooar sets out with Jim White to learn the technique of buffalo hunting from a stand. Moving six miles out, they locate a massive herd, utilizing the cover of sandhills and a riverbank to approach the animals while the skinners wait with a freight wagon nearby. As the buffalo draw close, Jim criticizes the animals' lack of intelligence and explains their tendency to stampede blindly. He then demonstrates how to set up a tripod shooting stand for his single-shot, lever-action Sharps .50 rifle. Jim methodically accounts for distance, wind, and bullet arc before opening fire. Using his specialized tripod, Jim systematically drops one buffalo after another; the narrator watches the animals lose their wild dignity as forty of them are killed without alerting the rest of the herd.
Once the hunt concludes, Jim signals the team to begin the arduous work of processing the kill. The skinners move the wagons forward and immediately begin skinning the carcasses using specialized knives and a horse-hitch to peel the hides away. While Jim White remains on high ground to keep watch for potential Indian threats, the rest of the crew spends nearly the entire day skinning and cutting the animals. By late afternoon, they finish harvesting the hides for curing and secure the hindquarters of meat—valued at three cents a pound—to ensure a profitable haul for the camp.