Cordite. That smell of cordite was my first impression after I released the shot.

It wasn’t actually cordite - that substance had been invented and then eventually abandoned many decades in the future but the word cordite sounded a lot better than ‘Ball Rifle Propellent WC844.’ The AR-15 doesn’t have much recoil and only a tiny bit of muzzle lift; however and in the hot, clean prairie air the smell of cordite was unmistakable.

Six hundred yards is well within range of the M16 variants and the round hit almost immediately, yet my brain registered the smell before the sound, the recoil or the small puff of dust that bloomed from the bulls hide on impact. The mighty beast took two more staggering steps before collapsing to the ground, I’d made a clean shot and he was dead before he hit the ground. The rifle report at that range was so small that the herd didn’t even lift their heads from grazing, he was one of the outliers after all. Still too young to challenge any of the senior bulls but almost full size without the tough meat that developed in older animals.

I moved on to the next target.

The fourth shot didn’t go so well because the bull decided to take a half-step back to gather some tasty morsel he had missed so I hit him square on the shoulder blade. That shot did disable him but didn’t amuse him and his bellows of pain and anger got the attention of the entire herd. His bellows were the signal the rest of the hunters were waiting for and the hunt began in earnest.

Petalesharo had stationed everyone correctly and gotten them well hidden using hillocks, blinds and anything else they could come up with. Rifles and muskets fired from every angle on the sides of the shallow valley they had urged the herd into. Almost fifty animals fell with the initial volley as the active hunt got underway; everyone went to horseback and I was racing down the hill on Lunch with my AR-15 scabbarded and my M1911 in hand. It was thrilling and adrenaline was pumping through my veins. Mouse and Matilda were already moving down to begin butchering my first kills, Lunch was in his element and made up the distance with amazing speed.

We closed with the herd and my big stallion showed his bravery by pacing a bull barely two feet away while I put a round into the beasts spine right behind the head. I managed three additional kills that way totaling eight for my immediate family. My current family counted five people giving me three carcasses to trade to the butcher should I choose to. In the end I gave one to Aunty and two were traded off or donated to the butcher giving me a running credit at his shop. This hunt would jumpstart the market place in our little town and the butcher and tanner would soon be doing a thriving business.

All told between us and the Pawnee we took almost five hundred head of buffalo that day which amazingly didn’t even put a dent in the overall herd. The herd had probably numbered close to twenty thousand animals and Pete later told me that it was much larger than normal as they had slowly forced multiple groups together for this event. They’d been working the herd for weeks to prepare the hunt and this little valley of mine was the perfect ambush location.

The Pawnee were happy which was obviously a good thing for my village, they rewarded us by giving us master classes in how to field dress a buffalo in as quickly as fifteen minutes without wasting a single part of the kill. Even the blood was captured and transported back to camp; Fritz, the butcher, simply stared in awe before he got down to the business of learning how to do it himself. At the end of the day there wasn’t much left to show that the hunt had taken place there except for matted grass, blood stains and hoof prints. We had cleaned up any and all signs of our passing except for the buffalo chips, those had to dry for a few days before we could recover them. The kids would be out with the dog cart in the next weeks picking them up for later use. I visited that shallow valley again when I returned from my Fort Atkinson trip and there was simply no sign that anything had ever happened there, it was once again simply a small valley of swaying long grass sweltering in the summer sun.

While the herd was hardly dented and the valley left unscathed the same couldn’t be said for our remaining stock of beer and whiskey kegs we’d brought back with us from St. Louis. The celebration of a successful hunt was truly a site to behold and an incredible example of gluttony at it’s very best. We had musicians from a variety of cultural backgrounds competing and even combining sounds; we had a few truly talented folk who started to work together to combine the rhythms and sounds.

Naturally a few of the lads tried to get rambunctious in the manner that young men always had but we’d been smart enough to start the eating long before the drink was introduced and nothing got so out of control that a swift word from an elder didn’t calm it right down. Naturally, there were a few contests over the affections of certain young girls, but again that was managed without even so much as a bloody nose or split lip. The offenders were normally sent off to deliver more food to the guards on duty and reminded that true danger still lurked at our borders. Usually a walk in the night air and a reminder that not everyone got to party was enough to calm the hottest of heads.

Morning brought groans and muttering across both camps yet the work of the hunt was far from done, it would actually be weeks more of effort to get all of that meat properly put up. People were bouncing from camp to camp exchanging tips and techniques, it was a fine example of cross-cultural technology exchange.

It also further cemented our relationship with an important ally and added an array of new techniques and recipes to our arsenal.

To be honest I would have done it all just for the recipes.