Gunsmoke (TV Series) Buffalo Hunter (1959) User Reviews

Psycho Dodge style with an ecological message thrown in

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 29 October 2016]

This is one of the odder episodes of Gunsmoke I've seen. A buffalo hunter, Gatluf, comes into Dodge to bring his badly injured worker to a doctor, which is in this case, Doc. The worker dies but how he dies is very strange. According to Gatluf the man was clumsy and dumped sixty pounds of hot lead on his face! Since it's hard to even lift 60 pounds unless you do it deliberately, this makes Matt suspicious. Couple it with the fact that the dead man was owed 200 dollars in wages by Gatluf, Matt is very suspicious.

Well, I'll spoil things by saying Matt was right, but then Gatluf goes crazy and begins attacking his men for no reason at all to the point that three of them decide to take the wagon full of hides already prepared and leave camp before Gatluf returns.

Matt and Chester get to the buffalo hunters' camp, Gatluf did end up dead, but they never fired a shot.

Thrown into the middle of all of this are several bits of dialogue about how the buffalo hunters are destroying the herds very rapidly - one of Gatluf's men mentions offhand he had killed one hundred that day - and how the Indians would have nothing to eat if things continued at this pace. Plus it makes clear that the buffalo hunters are after nothing but the hides, leaving the valuable meat to rot.

I'd recommend this as an offbeat episode of Gunsmoke, one without your usual villains of crooked gamblers and robbers, but with a villain who cares for nothing but himself, and I'm not even sure his actions are all about himself either. It's like destroying the environment drove him crazy!

No sadness for the way this story ends

[kfo9494 · 8/10 · 14 August 2013]

Jim Gatluf (Harold J Stone)is a hard man that is in charge of a small group of Buffalo Hunters. His goal in life is to make money by selling the hides and no one is going to stand in his way, not even the men that work for him.

Gatluf brings a man into town that has been badly burned by hot lead. Matt gets suspicious about the incident when the man dies and Gatluf will not even bury the body. When another of his men is discovered stabbed, Matt believes that Gatluf is killing off his men so that he will not have to pay them.

When Matt and Chester ride out to the Gatluf's camp another man has been stabbed but before dying is able to tell that Gatluf was the one that stabbed him. Matt is determined to arrest Jim Gatluf.

Well played by all involved. Harold Stone is excellent as the hard nose boss that only thinks of himself. Even James Arness seems refreshed in his role as he sets off to capture the hunter. A justifiable ending to an entertaining story.

Die Hard

[jamdifo · 8/10 · 11 September 2013]

I wonder if the Bruce Willis franchise got the title from this episode. Chester states at the end "He must've died awfully hard". Dillon says "He died as hard as any man ever did". And did he ever. Dillon said the Indians got to him and "What they did to him was something terrible", which leaves to the imagination what happened.

Harold J Stone plays Gatluf(in a memorable role), one of the coldest men on the show. He murders 3 men, one in a most brutal way, putting a guy's face into hot lead. Gatluf is also crazy. He has 4 men working for him, 3 of them had enough of Gatluf and leave with Gatluf's wagon. The one that stays loyal to him and stays, Gatluf stabs and kills. I really wanted to see Dillon take care of Gatluf in the end. It was a showdown I was really looking forward to. Gatluf appeared stronger than Dillon. Unfortunately, the Indians got him first.

Overall, an enjoyable episode, though it lacks a big showdown. Also, when Dillon thought Gatluf was shooting at him, why did he have to keep his hat on? Doesn't he want to keep cover? Wearing that hat really makes him stick out.

Happiness is Soap and Hot Water

[dougdoepke · 10 August 2007]

Strong story about buffalo hunters. Crew comes into Dodge with dead skinner whose face has been immersed in hot lead! Matt gets suspicious about circumstances, but crew leaves before he can act. Later, another crew member turns up dead and now Matt is on their trail. Gatlaff (Harold J. Stone) is one of the series' more memorable villains. As crew boss, he's about as mean as they come. Make-up department does an excellent job making the crew look more than a little grungy, which adds to the overall atmosphere. Beneath the grime and beard stubble, Gary Walburg arouses some sympathy as a conscionable skinner undeserving of his fate. Ending is appropriately satisfying. In passing-- I'm not sure why the 3 or 4 minute passage with friendly crew boss takes place, unless it was to fill out the half-hour time slot. It certainly adds nothing to the plot and surely wasn't intended to soften the image of buffalo hunters generally. Nonetheless, a good entry.

What Smell?

[darbski · 10/10 · 19 September 2017]

**SPOILERS** I gave it a ten, in spite of a couple of reasons. I didn't buy the Hot Lead in the face death. I mean, I know that hot lead would do it, but getting' it done is too hard to believe. Next, Matt and Kitty are talking' in the Long Branch, and she comments about how she didn't like the dirty, smelly, greasy skinners. Okay. Why not take a short minute, and explain it?

When these guys did their job, they wound up in some way or fashion with dead skin, blood, dirt, whatever they had to deal with to "hide the carcasses", stake them out, and load them up. Then they had to haul them to the nearest buyer, and get their pay. Dirty, smelly work, indeed; they must have smelled like death itself. The toughest would clean up, bank their pay and head back out. The others would usually hang out in the worst of the saloons, drink up their pay, and curse the fact that they had such rotten luck. The ones who had the best part of it were the actual shooters. they didn't have to get nearly as filthy in their occupation. In the cleaner, nicer of the taverns or saloons, these guys weren't welcome because of the awful stench. Whores were of the lowest types because of the same reason. People wanted the hides, just not the Hiders.

Not too hard to imagine a guy like Gatluf crackin' up, the prairie wind would do that to you, let alone the fact that other people would want you somewhere else. Killin his last hider and then headin out to shoot more Buff just showed how nuts he was. Tough end, though. Hide men were ALWAYS targets for plains Indians, naturally. They saw it as duty.

I've mentioned this before, this is different. Why not take the Sharp's rifle with them? Why not bury Gatluf? well, why not just tell the Cheyenne that you stopped by to pay respects, and have them catch and skin you too? Yup, THAT'S why. Of course, they'd bury Tobe, and then collect his horse and gear and head back to Dodge forthwith. Cheyenne can be real difficult when they're unhappy, and they were generally very unhappy with whiteyes.

Gatluf had it comin', no doubt. You don't kill your own associates and then get away with it. Tough bein' a cold killer, ain't it?

Reality

[maskers-87126 · 8/10 · 1 November 2018]

Old west style. Violent buit lineal realista. Not fòr the faint of heart.

"He's a hard man, no good at all. I don't envy ya comin' up against him."

[ben-thayer · 10 July 2023]

Dillon and Chester investigate a buffalo hunter whose workers are being murdered in various ways. It soon becomes clear the hunter is killing his crew to keep from paying them.

I get the impression that some others take issue with things I say about John Meston. Look, I'm not bashing him. It's well known that Meston was responsible for the success of the series, he wrote a lot of taught, psychological dramas that were very good stories. Nevertheless he had a number of episodes where he basically went over the top completely and pushed the limit, with characters that were *so* murderous it approached being ridiculous. This episode falls squarely in that group. I had to shake my head at the notion anyone could force a guy's face into molten lead without being injured badly himself. It's a bit much. Still, it was an interesting episode, that's undeniable.

There were lots of psychopathic murderers in John Meston's stories, he used them regularly. But for pure meanness, Gatluf could easily win the title. I did wonder how a guy like Gatluf, heinously murdering men right and left, hadn't been noticed...by the law, his men, other hunters...anybody. It's a safe bet these victims weren't his first, and he's not particularly careful or discrete. Dillon zeroes in on him as the killer with not much effort at all. Oh well, the 30min episodes didn't always have time for extended backstories.

And man, this one measured pretty high on the gruesome scale as well. There were multiple scenes where the viewers were not allowed to see a deceased body, they simply could not be shown. And it carries on to the very end, when Dillon says "Let's get outta here" and they leave Gatluf's body on the prairie for the buzzards and coyotes. But this was more to avoid any trouble with the party of Cheyenne that had dealt out their prescribed justice to a buffalo hunter. Best not to touch anything and get the hell out, fast. Geez, ya gotta wonder how Dillon was able to sleep after all the stuff he saw in this one. No doubt, Dillon had an ironclad constitution.

The cast isn't particularly well known, other than Harold J. Stone (Gatluf) and Garry Walberg (Tobe). Stone was a very prolific actor, and could play the full range of comedic to villainous characters extremely well. Walberg was a member of the regular cast on Quincy with Jack Klugman and Robert Ito.

One of Meston's more brutal scripts for sure.