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Frederick (Doc) Zahl

Doc Zahl had come to the United States from Germany in the early spring, 1868, with his brother, Frank. Doc went on to become a buffalo hunter and the "straightest shot in the West".

In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills and by the spring of 1876 adventurers where invading Dakota Territory. Doc and Frank equipped themselves with a team, wagon camp outfit and rifles, and followed a wagon train southwest to Fort Sully. Here Doc shot his first buffalo – or tried to. It was after this attempt that Doc learned about the “buffalo paunch shot” – an unspectacular but successful way to make a buffalo kill. Doc used the buffalo carcass much as the Indians did. Buffalo meat taste like beef; skins provided a shelter and blankets’ the bone marrow was cooked into a thick substance call Indian butter. It was reported by one skinner that Doc shot 127 buffalo in an hour. During the summer of 1877 the United States Army hired the Zahl brothers to rebury the soldiers who fell on the Custer battlefield or better know as the banks of the Little Big Horn. For fourteen years Doc had a stint as a sheriff in and around Morris, Minnesota, as well as an US Marshal.

The buffalo, hunted in greater numbers on both the Plains and the Southwest, were constantly on the move, their natural habits disturbed. In the summer of 1883 these great animals were expected to migrate from Canada but by the end of August the buffaloes had not returned to the Dakota Territory. By December, 1883, everyone realized that the days of the outright buffalo slaughter had ended

At the time of Doc's death, February 10, 1918, he was operating a large cattle ranch near the town in North Dakota which bears his name.