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The railways crossed not only Indian land - but bison ranges also, and the herds of bison, often numbering hundreds of thousands, had a nasty and all too frequent habit of trampling across the tracks and completely wrecking whole sections of the line. The railway owners did not react kindly to the costly damage caused by the bison. They decided that this animal would have to go!
The railway organised 'hunter specials' and ran them on a regular excursion basis whenever the bison herds were sure to be close to the line. The trains were packed with hunters who sat at the open windows of their carriages firing wildly into the herds grazing near the tracks.
Sometimes the trains paused for a while so that the hunters could cut out the lolling black tongues from some of the dead bison (the tongue was considered to be a delicacy) or perhaps take the head of a particularly fine specimen as a trophy. For the most part however, the bison were left to rot where they fell, and soon it was possible to spot the path of the railways from quite a long way off thanks to the double bank of decomposing bison remains - one on each side of the tracks. The stench of rotting carcasses was so dreadful that for a time the hunting specials had to be withdrawn during the hotter periods of the year. The less fastidious carrion eating animals gorged themselves sick along the grisly miles of rotting flesh.
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