American Bison (Bison bison)

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Cowboy's, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears by Matthew P. Mayo.
Within 15 years, from 1868 to 1883, the great plains buffalo herds, which at one time may have numbered as many as one hundred million, were almost entirely killed off. In 1873, in the midst of the buffalo boom years, railroads transported 754,329 hides, 4,852,800 pounds of meat, and 8,229,300 pounds of bones. The very next year, twenty million pounds of buffalo bones were transported east to refineries for the manufacture of sugar and fertilizer. More often than not, the hides were stripped and the carcasses left to rot, though sometimes the tongues were cut out, salted, smoked, and sold as delicacies.   Reply