One Heck Of A Ride

64 Chapter 6 Two shots from a replica Sharps .45-70 rifle were needed to put down this massive bison bull. Montana, 1985 Other North American Game A Bison Trophy Hunt In Montana D uring the 1980s and 1990s, a game rancher named Levi Britton offered hunts for a variety of North America big game animals, but the only animals that interested me were his bison. Even when millions of these shaggy oxen ranged freely across the plains, no one ever accused an American buffalo of being especially wary or challenging to hunt. Bud Dyer and I drove to Livingston, a small northwestern Montana ranching town on the Yellowstone River where the film “A River Runs Through It” was made just north of Yellowstone National Park. Since then, I read somewhere that the Gallatin Petrified Forest was only thirty-five miles from the town. Unlike Arizona’s better-known Petrified Forest National Park, its 50-million-old trees still are standing. Unfortunately, we didn’t know about the place and therefore didn’t take the time to see it while we were there. Bud and I met Levi at his lodge late in the afternoon in December 1985. (We had chosen a December date because bison hair is thickest then.) The hunt that he put on for us was interesting. Before we arrived at his ranch, he had put two big buffalo bulls out in Tom Miner Basin, next to the Yellowstone River. It was way below freezing and the animals were moving very slow, trying to get through the snow to find something to eat, he said. The next morning, Bud and I were getting ready to go out to shoot our bison when a group of people fromUbertiArms Company arrived. I fully intended to shoot a bull with my .300 Weatherby, my “old sidekick,” but they convinced me to use their replica Sharps .45-70 instead. It would be the first time I ever shot an old-time rifle at game (except for my grandad’s .25-35 lever-action Winchester that I used to take my first deer). The Uberti replica was true to the original 1874 Sharps long-range rifles that professional buffalo hunters used to take far-off bison without disturbing the herd. Buffalo hunters also used them to defend themselves (and survive) when 700 Comanche warriors attacked them in the Texas Panhandle, and it was the firearm that Tom Selleck used to make those long shots in the film “Quigley Down Under.” I was not worried about having to make a long shot at a bison. Any shot I would take would be pretty darn close. However, the Sharps people were interested in bullet performance and how a bullet would mushroom in an old bull. Bud and I trudged through the snow, working very close to the bulls before Bud shot his bull and it went straight down. “That hardly ever happens,” Levi said. “It usually takes two shots, sometimes three.” I was up next, and the bull staggered but did not go down when I shot. My next shot put him on the mat. Both bulls had been released a couple of days before we arrived, so I asked Levi what would have happened if they had decided to take off. It had happened in the past, he said, but the bull eventually showed up at a neighbor’s ranch. When