The Wild West of Yester-Year
Frank H. Mayer
By Rachel Kovaciny
Frank H. Mayer may not have been the most famous buffalo
hunter of them all, but he was probably the
longest-lived! In fact, when he died in 1954, he was only a
couple months shy of his 104th birthday. Mayer left behind
three books filled with his reminiscences about life in the
Wild West. While he had a master storyteller’s tendency to
exaggerate or embellish from time to time, his writings
still provide fascinating details for every student of our
nation’s history.
Five years after little Frank was born in Louisiana in 1850,
the Mayer family moved to Pennsylvania. There, Frank grew up
in a community where hunting and shooting were important
activities, as most families relied on hunting for a
significant part of their food supply. Mayer had a natural
aptitude for shooting, and liked to hang around gun shops
and learn as much as he could about how firearms were made,
repaired, and cared for. At age ten, Frank traded all the
furs he had trapped himself over the past two years for a
Kentucky rifle he used for the next seven decades. He fired
that rifle so often he had to have its rifling recut
multiple times. Three years later, in 1863, Frank joined the
Union Army as a drummer boy during the American Civil War,
presumably serving in the same artillery unit where his
father was an officer. Since underage drummer boys were
often semi-unofficial members of the military, it’s not
surprising we don’t have actual records for his service in
the war, but it’s disappointing that we can’t pinpoint
exactly what unit Frank Mayer served with. According to his
own memoirs, he was present at the battles of Gettysburg and
Fredericksburg, then at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
After the Civil War ended, Frank Mayer attended the Columbia
School of Mines in New York. His advanced schooling and
natural inclinations led him to become a “scientific hunter”
who pursued hunting in a logical and professional way. When
he became a buffalo hunter in the 1870s, he put his
knowledge of guns, hunting, and science to use. Mayer could
usually bring an animal down with a single shot, which
minimized damage to the valuable hides. Mayer’s weapon of
choice for hunting buffalo was a breech-loading Sharps rifle
with a German scope. He is credited with inventing a steel
bipod that attached to his rifle’s barrel to provide more
reliable accuracy. The combination of scope and bipod
allowed him to fire from far enough away from the buffalo
herd so as not to spook them, but without the risk of
wounding an animal instead of killing it cleanly. He did not
slaughter as many buffalo in a day as he could, but
restricted himself to thirty animals each day. That was how
many his team could skin and butcher by the end of the day,
which meant his kills were all profitable instead of some
going to waste.
In 1877, Frank Mayer married Marjorie Monroe. Their marriage
lasted until her death in 1921. Even though Mayer outlived
his wife for three decades, he remained devoted to her
memory. When he was more than a hundred years old, he still
became emotional whenever he talked about Marjorie. Mayer
rejoined the U.S. Army as an adult, serving in the Indian
Wars and the Spanish-American War. He retired with the rank
of colonel. While in his sixties, he traveled to Australia
and Brazil, searching for gold and diamonds. He eventually
returned to the United States and settled in Colorado, where
he served as a U. S. Marshal.
In the early 1900s, Mayer wrote three books: The Buffalo
Harvest (with Charles Roth), The Song of the Wolf,
and The Unmuzzled Ox. He also wrote a series of
articles about firearms in the 1930s. He continued to be an
avid hunter, particularly of big game, and reportedly killed
his last buck when he was 102. Frank Mayer died in Fairplay,
Colorado, on February 12, 1954. He is buried in the cemetery
there, and his house has been preserved and restored as part
of the South Park City museum of Fairplay, one of over forty
buildings you can explore and where you can learn about the
gold mining history of Colorado in the 1800s.