Champion Buffalo Hunter

The Champion Buffalo Hunter is the fascinating memoir of one of the most legendary frontiersmen of the early West, “Yellowstone Vic” Smith. Born Victor Grant Smith in 1850, he lived a colorful life across the American frontier from the 1870s to 1890s. A classic frontiersman, he was a trapper, dispatch rider, scout, trick shot—and, yes, buffalo hunter extraordinaire. Discovered in Harvard University’s Houghton Library in 1990, this remarkable autobiography—which Smith wrote in the third person—is comparable to Andrew Garcia’s Tough Trip through Paradise, but, notes the editor, “without the melodrama.” Written in a matter-of-fact, often humorous style, it will engage and entertain all those interested in the lives and times of the men who wandered the West, following the great herds and settling only long enough for the snows to melt. This new edition includes a revised and updated foreword by Jeanette Prodgers based on new research into the life of Yellowstone Vic.

Jeanette Prodgers spent more than a decade gathering information on Victor Grant Smith, or "Yellowstone Vic" as he was once known. Her interest in Vic Smith was piqued in 1984 when she was collecting stories for a book of western bear tales. In 1990, she discovered his unpublished manuscript at Harvard and began editing it for publication. Prodgers has degrees in journalism and counseling from The University of Montana. She lives in Butte, Montana.