That's absolutely right. The U.S. Army mowed down the plains bison, elk herds, deer, pronghorn, wild horses, and anything else they ran across that would feed someone from one of the Plains Tribes. It was a deliberate, systematic effort by the Dept of War to put an end to the "Indian Wars" on the plains. Remove an enemy's food supply, and they reach a point where they cannot fight any longer. Ugly, ugly business. Of course that hasn't got a thing to do with wood bison, which live in the woodlands of northern Canada, and were recently reintroduced into Alaska.....

As to whether or not he knew what he was doing when he shot that bison, I'd like to point out that a bison is pretty different from a caribou, moose, or even a muskox. There is now way in the world that the perp didn't know what he was shooting at.