Question: How many horses did Smiles A Lot care for?
Question: When the Lakota go to save Dunbar, Bauer gets away, one of the Lakota kills him. Should've the hatchet been in his back and not the front? (02:49:11)
Question: I was wondering how the buffalo hunt was actually done. Were the buffalo actually shot (for meat or to cull the herd) or was there some computer graphics involved (I can see a truck running along side next to the cameraman with a tranquilizer gun to make the animal fall)?
Answer: I did a little Internet research. It does not appear that any bison were killed for the hunting scene. Dummy bison were mounted on moving dollies and yanked off by attached straps to look like they'd fallen. Two live domesticated bison were used for certain shots. I can remember watching one of those, "Making of..." TV documentaries on this movie. They showed realistic-looking bison dummies lying on the ground and compressed air being used to simulate the "wounded" animals' breathing. A tranquilizer gun could not have been used on live bison for this purpose. It's a misconception that animals immediately fall unconscious when darted because it takes time for the drugs to have an effect. Films in the past have actually killed animals for films, but they were often ones selected to cull a herd.
Answer: While the fallen buffalo were furry dummies on wires (there were only a couple, filmed from several different angles), the buffalo stampede was real. A private herd of 3,500 buffalo in South Dakota was prompted to stampede five times, as seven cameras captured the action over eight days of filming. The illusion of arrows piercing the animals' sides was accomplished with simple special effects (including arrow shafts attached to body straps). The massive bull charging the little boy was a docile animal that was tempted with Oreo cookies. No animals were injured or traumatized in filming the scene; in fact, the only near-injury occurred when Kevin Costner himself (who did his own stunt riding) fell off his horse during the shoot. Https://ew.com/article/1991/03/08/filming-dances-wolves-stampede/.
Charles Austin Miller