How to get your buff butchered

[Brent]

Guys, some of you may not know that I'm and academic type and as a result, I'm constantly rearing grad students. Yes, this is relevant, hang on.

One of my more recent students is a guy that is interested in the ecology of a very unique critter - namely the indians that populated 9-10,000 yr ago. These aren't the plains indians that buffalo hunters knew. They are much much older and they specialized on bison hunting.

So, one of the things Erik wants to do is to obtain some data on bison butchery - how long it takes to tear down specific elements of the carcass etc using traditional tools of the time of course - Rocks. He was arranging to simply buy a few bison from a butcher and have at it (he has done this sort of thing before), but I suggested that maybe - just maybe someone here might be planning on hunting a buff and perhaps we could arrange to butcher your's for you. The down side to this is that I don't really know how your steaks might turn out so far as shape and thickness, but what Erik is really after is getting numbers on bone disarticulation and marrow extraction. So, the bulk of the meat really isn't that important.

I don't have all the details here about what he really needs to do, but down the road a bit, if you are thinking about doing some buffalo killing in Nebraska, the Dakotas, or E. Wyoming, maybe we could set something up. I'm not quite sure we could fix this up as a tax write-off donation to a public university, but if you have some creative accountants on hand, one never knows. Better than giving it to the football team.

Brent

[bulldog]

Yes, Brent, we all know you ar an academic type due to your knowledgable posts and details. But herein you might be gettin off base as maybe these Injuns wern't in no hurry. I read that Eskimos like their walrus aged and sometimes they let it lie on the beach for months untill it turns green and soft. One story said it was there a year. Course maybe frozen part of the time. Now this sounds not so good, but I've eaten sort of green looking steaks that had sat and they were pretty tender. These were from the market and probably re-wrapped.
So, maybe they just camp next to a down buffalo and snack away slow like. Maybe all winter, in fact. I suppose you don't have any 10,000 bones in shape to check careful if there are many different types of cut and scratch marks from various knives and rocks as they slowly did do and maybe lost some instruments so had to get new ones. Another thing, maybe the wolves even helped them by dragging out the guts or parts they didn't want and maybe they let them. Also, even maybe rats helped out, who knows. Maybe even a buffalo became a sort of garden to raise other things the Injuns could then catch and keep like woodpeckers and tasty insects and such. Plus the mice and things attracted and nesting in the remains. Then you got the plants growing near on the warm soil and fertilized and the rabbits eating that. So, maybe they wern't in such a hurry to get it into the refrigerator and then to the consummer unaged and sort of tasteless. Plus, don't forget them bones might make a real desert months later. Isn't that why dogs bury them sos they get better? Now I hate to tell an academic nothing or especially a grad student who knows everything, but some of us rancher types grown up on practical advice and hard work (even though I didn't even have to work at all but could just sit on my fortune) just we learned from other guys and seeing things and no, we arn't fooled by politicians either who want to just have things cooked in trans-fats as they are a new invention like margerine which is okay, but which I don't eat as I like natural butter, for instance. I think margerine can be made from any veg oil and already they probably can make it from oil shale for all I know. Anyway, hope this adds to yourn perspective and I bet other's know about this from living with nature and even Indians of today who may still have some techniques like burying in a hole where hot rocks was heated and cooking that way of just plain drying stuff, maybe even on the bone so the bone later ripens, etc. Maybe you guys are barking up the wrong leg in trying to skin this cat anyway. Why don't you try to figure out why they pay government hunters to thin out herds of various animals, and keep real hunters from doing so? Some things don't make much sense to me. Course, I'm not talking about driving up in a pick-up and shooting something and pretending that is hunting very much. Might as well be in a helicopter or biplane and shoot with shotguns and call that hunting. Course when I was a kid we chased rabbits in a pickup and shot them but some guys need to grow up. And how about them idiots in Australia that run around with big lights on their trucks and blast at everything while drinking too. Saw it on tv which I don't watch much. Thems the 10,000 year behind duds you need to examine to find out what stupidity makes them tick and if they are ammenable to some right sense or just hopeless cases of stunted growth. I'm probably just preaching to the choir as they say, but you never know - maybe some guys here actually skin their own and don't use chainsaws and they can tell you how long it takes. I know with a butcher knives takes three people all afternoon to cut up a big pig right, but he's pretty greasy too and hard to hold. I'd not even try if I had just rocks to do it with and would just pile him over with cow chips and cook him right there. Maybe they did that too or maybe they just looked for ones struck by lightening and half-eaten and having already set for weeks were just prime eating! How you guys going to figure out that? By the way, how do you know if them 10,000 yr old wrote anything - esp if they used blood or charcoal on skins that have all disappeared? Course some rocks have pictures of sorts - any show them cutting up the buffalos? Bulldog

[Trigger Dr]

Bulldog,
You really remind me of a couple of attorney friends. ( No offense to the attorney types on the forum)
The only way you could say less, would be to talk longer.
Jim

[Kelley O. Roos]

Somebody let the village idiot out,(bulldog) again.

Kelley O.

[Brent]

Bulldog,
You really remind me of a couple of attorney friends. ( No offense to the attorney types on the forum)
The only way you could say less, would be to talk longer.
Jim

Dang that sums it up well!

bulldog, the answers to all these these things are known or under study. Where they went, how they got there, what they did, all being parsed out. About 3/4 of what you ramble about is old news, the rest is wrong, and hell, I don't know much about it myself. Never studied extinct critters before.
Brent

[hatchet]

I was thinking the other day, how it's been 3 months since Bulldog posted anything. Then low and behold, look who popped out of the wood work.

[bulldog]

Brent, not to be contrary, but just what 3/4 is known and what is the ones the rest what is wrong?

Jim, as usual you have added much wisdom and humor to this inquiry.

Kelly, you've obviously given a lot of thought to your comments.

Now, I m not agin studying things and even studying how long it takes to hack up a buffalo with a rock. I was just trying to put a perspecative view on it. And a few other things. Well, EXCUSE Me. Bulldog

[Kelley O. Roos]

bulldog, there is no EXCUSE for you.

Kelley O.

[RMulhern]

I'm ROTFLMAO!! This is better than drinkin 4 fingers of FAMOUS GROUSE!!

[Brent]

Bulldog, sometimes you get an answer that is so far "out there" (to put it nicely) it's just not going over point by point.

These people lived in camps that moved every few weeks to every few months. The longest habitations at one site probably did not last more than 6 months. They didn't wait for the carcass to produce fertilizer for a garden - and they didn't garden at all.

We know they did not hunker over bison because their camps never had entire carcasses of bison in them. If you find only legs - do you presume that the legs just walked over to that stream and fell over after leaving the body behind? Probably not.

And were you to hunker over a bison - it would not last your clan a winter - but if you did, how would you carry your water? In an age where water carrying devices are hard to manufacture on a plain. And with what wood would you cook him? Would you rather carry the wood to cook your steak to the steak or carry your steak to the wood? Think man!

We know they killed bison opportunistically as the animals hung out in convenient places to be killed. When they did kill them, they often killed many at a time (over a drop), and more than they could use. So, they cut off hunks - sometimes, not the obvious hunks that we might first think - and carried them back to camp. The places where those bison died are meer cracks in the ground where there is little room to stand while butchering, never mind building a camp with shelters, cooking areas, kids running all over, and dogs chasing in and out.

How many people, how big a region they traveled, and how many places out there could support a bison all depends on the details of the killing, the cutting, and the hauling, not to mention the abundance of bison in the first place.

Brent

[pete]

This thread is fascinating in it's opposite extremes. Anyway, Brent you might have to settle for a beef carcass. Obviously anatomically they're not identical but they should be similar enough for the intended purpose. Finding somebody that'll let someone experiment on their buffalo might be tough since we don't get them all that often.
Then again maybe you can find one of those guys that bulldog mentioned that likes to let their buffalo lay around awhile and rot a little. They might not be so picky.

[Brent]

Pete, can't be beeves for this purpose - not sure why, but the differences are enough to matter. We will find something, posting here is a bit of a long shot but thought I'd try. Brent

[bulldog]

Well, Brent, I have to say that it is hard to argue with someone like yourself who knows what they are talking about. And, when you're kinda ignorant of the facts and scientific research conclusions like I am it is even harder. However, I have walked the Missouri river shores. I have also read the Journals of Lewis and Clark about their encounters with Indians who lived all along the Missouri and all along to the Columbia and to the ocean. Also, I read of their encounters with Grizzley bears all along too. Now in all my walking, I have never seen much at all of any Indian camps 200years old. Or, of grizzley sign or even bones or teeth 200 years old. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a pre-pop-top beer can sign. That would take you back maybe 50 years ago. And here you think you know how they camped and what they ate and how they drank 10,000 years ago. And you think they didn't have wood on the plains? Or brush? Or water? I always thought where the glaciers scraped and melted and it warmed, it was kinda like a forest with many ponds. You imagine different or have read different stuff. I wouldn't swear I'm right and even maybe a good digger could come up with some very old sites and date them well and figure out why the leg bones were still there. However, if one can't find a beer can from 50 years ago, what makes it so obvious of how things were 10,000 years ago. And not just beer cans. Show me much of anything from 50 years ago that you can find at a camp site. Much less 200 years ago, or 10,000 years ago. And by the way, Lewis and Clark made plenty of camps - anyone ever found one or much of what was in it? I do recall that years ago someone did find a lead plate he marked and put on a hill above the Missouri, but that's not much to find. And just what evidence do you think they have found about how he cut up a horse to eat, or a dog or a bear or elk. Sure, you can read what he says, but what evidential stuff has been found? I don't think much. So, what I am saying is that how injuns ( or early persons)10,000 years ago cut up their buffalo might not be by stones, but by other bone knives or even wooden knives. I made both when I was a kid as they are easy to make. I know where we made them and left them too near a creek. I bet nobody can find any trace of either. Mice eat bones and termites eat wood. And guess what - I bet the frogs are gone too by pesticides. The world changes fast and it might not have been what it now is or we think it was. But as I say, I don't really know, just speculating plus what I've read and seen here and there and I sure wouldn't want to come to blows over any details in dispute. I just hope you pass this on to the young feller and let him think if he really wants to write a thing on how someone else thinks buffalo were cut up and delt with 10,000 years ago.

Now as fer poor Kelly, we'll give him a by as he's a hard working fella and good BP supporter and a good shot too so I heard so he must know how to put things together and plus he helps guys out now and then. Anyways, hes got himself in enough troubles previous from from his loose fingers on the keyboard that no use making things worse by getting too disturbed and saying things.

I just hope Jim doesn't have too many lawyer type friends who mighten read this stuff as the ones not really friends might be a bit thin on taking abuse or being made a joke of. Maybe they like it but some might find it tiring is what I think. Anyway, I think I've said my piece on this and if its too long sorry, but I bet there's guys out there can fill a book with facts like Brent can but no doubt doesn't have the time. Bulldog

[Brent]

Bulldog,
You don't find these places easily. And, with Erik's work we might better be able to predict where to look. In the meantime, though, we have found some. Or I should say "they" have - I'm no anthropologist.

These places are excavated every spring and then protected until the next season. They are treasure troves of history that give us all the clues we've got. The folks that study them are master detectives of sort and good at what they do.

Brent

[Trigger Dr]

Bulldog,
Just food for thought... By keeping your eyes open, and with a lot of luck things such as what I have attached can be found.
fossilized Buffalo teeth found while elk hunting north of Townsend Mt. 1977
Arrow points found at the base of a Pishkin (buffalo jump) just south west of Livingston Mt., 1956 some are bird points a couple are hunting points.
Inuit artifacts found on the sand at the mouth of the kuparuk river, north slope of Alaska when I was working for Pease-Hamilton.






And, as a final thought... Bulldog, you are the type of person that can brighten up an eentire room by walking out.
Jim