Although Russell never saw a buffalo hunt of the type depicted in this bronze, he was familiar with descriptions and portrayals by earlier writers and artists who had witnessed the spectacle. George Catlin, whose books the artist read, described one type of buffalo hunt called the “surround,” where mounted hunters with bows and lances swooped down from opposite directions toward a large herd of grazing buffalo. As the horsemen closed in upon them, Catlin reported., “The poor affrighted animals were eddying about in a crowded and confused mass, hooking and climbing upon each other.” In the “grand turmoil” that followed, the mounted hunters galloped around the beasts, loosing their arrows or driving their lances into them. Russell viewed the Plains Indian buffalo hunt as the quintessential subject to evoke the bygone days of the Old West. The subject appears many times in his art, and tradition holds that he derived the composition of this bronze, known as Meat for Wild Men, from a painting now called Buffalo Hunt [No. 39], also in the Amon Carter Museum’s permanent collection. California oilman William M. Armstrong, who commissioned Meat for Wild Men, must have viewed the completed model prior to September 9, 1924, for on that date Nancy Russell ordered the first two copies of the bronze from Roman Bronze Works in New York. One of the casts went to Armstrong, and the other was exhibited in New York for a hefty price of $2,000. In 1926 it was sold to Edward L. Doheny, another wealthy California oilman. Nancy Russell had only two additional casts made by Roman Bronze Works, one prior to December 1926 and one in May 1927. The example reproduced here is likely one of those casts. Guido Nelli, himself a skilled foundry man and director of the California Art Bronze Foundry in Los Angeles, later noted that the bronze had been extremely difficult to produce, the original plaster model being cut into fifty-seven separate pieces for casting.