Context:

The speaker discusses how some hide hunters recorded their experiences later in life. John Cook published this memoir in 1907 about his experiences as a hide hunter. During the Civil War, Cook fought for the Union along the Missouri-Kansas border, and from fall 1874 to spring 1878, he hunted buffalo in the Texas Panhandle. The speaker notes that Cook's descriptions of the day-to-day business of hunting and skinning are vividly detailed.