_________image_________ Buffalo Roundup Gang - 1938.9 The Kill After dinner, fresh horses were saddled for the afternoon’s toil. This involved channeling the same buffalo just enclosed, along drift fences, and eventually through the corral gates, which slid shut behind a mass of angry muscle. The horses were now allowed to rest while courageous cowboys worked the corrals on foot, amid a hundred milling bison. The animals were coaxed into the crowding pen and one at a time into the chutes, where they were inspected. Some were selected for slaughter and released into the beef enclosure, others counted for the yearly census and let graze in a sixteen square mile fenced area until roundup was complete. This method eliminated handling or counting an animal more than once. Placed in a horse-drawn wagon within the beef enclosure, rifleman Sam Purshell, with his 303, shot each buffalo with accuracy. The animal was immediately bled and hauled to the abbatoir. Paid by the meat contractors, Sam averaged 70 animals daily, for a month of steady work for the butchers. It is believed that during the years Sam was involved with Park roundups, his total kill was 39,000 buffalo! Each year the meat packing company would send out their own butchers, fed and housed at the abbatoir site. Carcasses were inspected, hung, quartered, hauled by wagon or truck to the train station and loaded into meat cars. Hides were stacked and sprinkled with salt to draw out the blood and initiate curing. They too were hauled to town to be shipped to the tannery.