Which Old West rifle killed the most buffalo?

My shop is wall-to-wall AR-15s most days, but I never pass up a good single-shot rifle argument. The video above asks a question I’ve chewed on myself: of the great buffalo rifles of the Old West, which one actually killed the most buffalo? The maker compares three classics, the Sharps 1874, the Remington Rolling Block, and the Springfield Trapdoor, all in .45-70, and lands somewhere I mostly agree with. I’m Lance Rankin of Western Sport in Roanoke, Texas, and here’s my take on his argument.

The three buffalo rifle contenders

The Sharps 1874 is the one everybody names first, and Quigley Down Under is half the reason. It deserves the reputation on merit too: it was the professional hunter’s rifle, accurate, powerful, and built like a bank vault, often chambered in big .50-caliber rounds beyond the .45-70. If buffalo rifles had a Daniel Defense, the Sharps was it: the premium tool for people who shot for a living.

The Remington Rolling Block was the working man’s answer. Simple, nearly indestructible action, the block literally rolling back to open the breech, and meaningfully cheaper than a Sharps. Remington built them by the boatload.

The Springfield Trapdoor started life as a military rifle, named for its hinged breech. Military-scale production made it common and affordable on the civilian market, and plenty of hunters carried one for exactly that reason.

All three digested the .45-70, throwing a 405-grain or even 500-grain slug that hit like a freight car and penetrated deep. For an animal the size of a bison, that was the right medicine. The NRA has a good short history of all three rifles if you want more background.

Fame versus numbers

Here’s where the video makes its best point. The Sharps has the legend, but legends are built by the famous few. The buffalo harvest was carried out by thousands of ordinary hunters using whatever reliable rifle they could afford, and the affordable, available rifles were the Rolling Block and the Trapdoor. By sheer weight of numbers, those two may well have put more buffalo on the ground than the celebrated Sharps.

I see the same pattern in my shop today. The gun press obsesses over premium rifles, but walk through any Texas deer lease and count the plain-Jane .30-30s and budget bolt guns doing the actual work. Availability and price fill more freezers than prestige ever has. No reason the 1870s were different.

The sobering part

It’s worth saying plainly, because the video does: this chapter of history isn’t a romantic one. Herds numbering in the millions were nearly wiped out in roughly two decades, and the slaughter was in many cases encouraged by the U.S. government as a deliberate strategy to destroy the primary food source of the Plains tribes. I love these old rifles as machines and as history, and I can hold that alongside honesty about what they were used to do. The near-extinction of the American bison was a tragedy, full stop.

So which was it?

Nobody kept a scoreboard, so there’s no definitive answer. My money matches the video’s: the Sharps earned the fame, but the Rolling Blocks and Trapdoors, taken together, probably did more of the killing simply because there were more of them in more hands. History usually works that way. The icon gets the movie; the common tool does the work.

If reading about these rifles makes you want a big-bore lever gun of your own, the .45-70 is still very much alive. We carry the Henry All Weather Side Gate in .45-70 and the Henry Side Gate .45-70 with a brass receiver, plus Federal Power-Shok .45-70 300 grain to feed them. Browse the rest of our rifles online; firearms ship to your local FFL.

If you’ve got a great-grandfather’s Trapdoor or Rolling Block in the closet and want it looked over before you shoot it, that’s a job I enjoy. Email [email protected].