Before the introduction of horses, the bison were driven in large driveways made of stones and willow rods and then hunted over cliffs. Large groups of people drove the bison several miles, forcing a stampede that eventually sent many animals tumbling over cliffs. Due to the large quantities of meat obtained in this way, the hunters had a surplus that was used for trade.

The Native Americans developed a specific slaughter method to make the best use of the bison. This method involved skinning the back to get to the tender meat just under the skin. This area was known as the “hatched area”. After removing this hatched area, the front legs and shoulder blades were cut off. The hump meat (of the wood bison), the meat of the ribs and the internal organs of the bison were exposed. After everything was exposed, the spine was cut off and the pelvis and legs were removed. And finally, the head and neck were removed together. This made it possible to dry the tough meat and produce pemmican, dried meat.

Later, when the Plains Indians had horses, it was found that a good rider could easily kill enough bison to feed his tribe and family as long as the herd was nearby. The bison provided meat, leather, sinew for bows, fat, dried dung for fires and even the hooves were boiled to make glue. When times were bad, the bison was consumed down to the last hair.

In the late 19th century. the bison was hunted almost to extinction, mainly by commercial hunters, and was decimated to a few hundred animals by the mid-1880s. They were hunted for their skin and the rest of the animals were left to rot. After the animals had rotted, their bones were collected and shipped in large quantities.

The US Army authorized and endorsed the slaughter of the bison herds. The US government encouraged the hunting of bison for several reasons, firstly to allow ranchers to raise their livestock without competition from other animals and secondly and most importantly to weaken the North American Indians by depriving them of their main source of food and forcing them onto reservations. Without the bison, the indigenous people were forced to either leave the land or starve to death.

According to historian Pekka Hämäläinen, the Native Americans also contributed to the collapse of the bison. In the 1830s, the Comanche and their allies killed about 280,000 bison per year, which was almost at the limit of sustainability for this region. A long and intense drought hit the southern prairies in 1845 and lasted until the 1860s. This caused a widespread collapse of the bison herds. In the 1860s, rain fell again and the bison herds recovered to a certain extent.

The rail industry also wanted the bison herds to be eradicated. Wandering herds of bison could damage locomotives if they were unable to stop in time. In harsh winter conditions, the herds often sought shelter in the man-made cuts created by railroad tracks that wound through mountains and hills. As a result, herds of bison sometimes caused delays of days for trains.

Bison hide was used for clothing such as coats, carpets and, above all, industrial machine belts. Before electrification, factories were primarily powered by centralized steam engines. The power was transmitted through an arrangement known as longitudinal transmission. The power of the machine was transmitted to shafts suspended from the ceiling of each floor of the factory. Through these shafts, the power was transmitted to the individual machines on each floor by a leather belt that ran over two pulleys, one on the shaft under the ceiling, the other on the machine. Buffalo leather was the material of choice for this application as it was strong and wear-resistant.

There was a strong export trade in bison hides to Europe. Bison hunting in the Old West was often conducted by large commercial companies. Organized teams of one or two professional hunters were deployed, supported by skinners, gun cleaners, cartridge loaders, cooks, shepherds, blacksmiths, guards, carters and numerous horses and carts. Men were even deployed to remove the lead from the bison’s carcasses. Many of these professional commercial hunters killed over a hundred animals in a single location. A good hide could fetch $3 in Dodge City, Kansas, and a very good one (the heavy winter hide) up to $50, at a time when a laborer was lucky if he could make a dollar a day.

The commercial hunters tracked down the herd early in the morning and positioned themselves about 100 meters away from it. Then they shot the animals in the lungs from the side. Head shots were often unsuitable, as the soft lead bullets often bounced off the skull and did not penetrate it. The bison were shot until either the herd sensed danger or a wounded animal attacked another and the herd then dispersed. If carried out correctly, many animals fell on one occasion. The skinners followed. They drove a nail through the nose of each dead animal, connected a group of horses and pulled the skin off the carcass. The hides were prepared and then stacked on the company’s wagon by other team members.
For a decade, beginning in 1873, there were hundreds of such commercial hide/hunting groups hunting bison at any given time, killing far more animals than the American Indians or the individual meat hunters. Commercial hunting certainly killed between 2,000 and 100,000 animals per day. It was said that the Big .50s was fired so often by commercial hunters that they needed at least two rifles to let the barrels cool down.

The construction of the railroad through Colorado and Kansas divided the bison herd into two parts, the southern herd and the northern herd. The last refuge of the southern herd was the tip of Texas.
As large herds became fewer and fewer, proposals emerged to protect the bison. However, these proposals were dropped when it was realized that the Plains Indians depended on bison for their livelihood. In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant held up a federal bill that would protect the dwindling bison herds, and in 1875, General Philip Sheridan pleaded to hold a joint session with Congress to slaughter the herds and deprive the Indians of their food source. In 1884, the American bison was on the verge of extinction.