In September, the scattered camp groups reunited at Wind River for the fall buffalo hunt. The buffalo was a critical factor in Wind River subsistence, for it provided the margin of survival through the long winter. The Eastern Shoshone were frequently joined in the buffalo hunt by other Shoshone from the Bear River country and, less often, by Shoshone and Bannock from Idaho. The last two groups usually hunted buffalo in Montana with certain Plateau tribes, and their routes did not usually coincide. Informants uniformly said that all the Eastern Shoshone went out to hunt buffalo together, and Shimkin (1947a, p. 280) states that "in full strength, often with Bannocks or others accompanying them, they would cross the Wind River Range" for the fall hunt. It seems certain that, insofar as they may have penetrated far north into the Big Horn Basin, numerical strength was necessary during the immediate pre-reservation period and shortly thereafter.
As the buffalo camp moved out on the range, scouts were sent ahead to locate the herds. The actual techniques used by hunters were much the same as among the Plains tribes. Ideally, two horses were used, one for riding within reach of the herd, the other a swift horse trained to run close to the buffalo while avoiding the animal's horns. The herd was surrounded and run, and the flanking hunters shot arrows and launched spears at the prey. When a buffalo was killed, the hunter threw an arrow or some personal, identifying possession on the carcass to mark it as his.
This was apparently the main technique for buffalo hunting. They were not stampeded over cliffs, as was the practice of some Indian tribes. One informant said that Chief Washakie would not permit it for reasons of conservation. Occasionally, hunters on foot stalked and killed buffalo with the bow and arrow, but such activities did not take place during the communal hunts.
When on the fall hunt, individual hunters did not attack the herds, for the animals might stampede for long distances after only one or two were killed. The fall hunt was organized coöperatively, but informants denied the existence of the typical Plains police, or soldier, societies or any comparable form of institutionalized discipline to prevent individual hunting.
The time spent in the fall hunt, including travel, appears to have been about two months—from mid-September to mid-November. Meat and hides were prepared by the women and packed back to winter camp. Shimkin doubts the efficiency of the buffalo hunt (1947a, p. 266). If it is assumed that each family had from five to ten horses, three of which were needed to drag the tipi and utensil-loaded travois and three for riding, only two horses were, according to his reasoning, available for packing. Since one would be loaded with hides for trade, only one was available for carrying meat. The supply carried was sufficient for no more than twenty days, Shimkin concludes.
The mounted buffalo hunters were not the only Shoshone inhabitants of Wyoming, and one more group remains to be discussed. In the mountain chain extending from the Wind River Range northwest to the Teton and Gros Ventres ranges and northward into Yellowstone lived a Shoshone population known as the Dukarika, or Sheepeaters. These Dukarika are not to be confused with a Shoshone population of the same name in the mountains of Idaho. The two were socially and geographically separate; their common name is due only to the fact that there were mountain sheep in the habitats of both. The name thus has no more significance in terms of political organization than do the food names applied to Shoshone living in certain areas of Nevada and Idaho.
There is little documentary information on the Dukarika, and contemporary Wind River informants knew very little about them. Our earliest reference to these secluded people is found in Bonneville's journals, when, in September, 1833, three Indians were sighted in the Wind River Range. Irving writes (1850, p. 139):
Captain Bonneville at once concluded that these belonged to a kind of hermit race, scanty in number, that inhabit the highest and most inaccessible fastnesses. They speak the Shoshone language and probably are offsets from that tribe, though they have peculiarities of their own, which distinguish them from all other Indians. They are miserably poor, own no horses, and are destitute of every convenience to be derived from an intercourse with the whites. Their weapons are bows and stone-pointed arrows, with which they hunt the deer, the elk, and the mountain sheep. They are to be found scattered about the countries of the Shoshone, Flathead, Crow, and Blackfeet tribes; but their residences are always in lonely places, and the clefts of rocks.
Osborne Russell, when trapping in Lamar Valley in Yellowstone Park in July, 1835, observed (1955, p. 26):
Here we found a few Snake Indians comprising six men, seven women, and eight or ten children who were the only inhabitants of this lonely and secluded spot. They were all neatly clothed in dressed deer and sheep skins of the best quality and seemed to be perfectly contented and happy.