![A Long-in-the-Tooth Long-Ranger]( "A Long-in-the-Tooth Long-Ranger")
Centenarian Frank Mayer (1850–1954) was a drummer boy during the American Civil War, fought in the later Indian Wars, and served as a U.S. Marshal in Colorado. Along the way, he hunted bison professionally and turned that endeavor into a profitable, strategy-based business.
Born in Louisiana on May 28, 1850, Frank H. Mayer lived to the ripe old age of 103 years and nine months. During his long, adventurous life, he became an expert marksman, and one researcher called him a “true, dyed-in-the-wool gun crank.” Another writer, in the pages of our sister publication Guns & Ammo (Fall 1958 Vol. 1, Issue 2; also available at gunsandammo.com), referred to him as the “scientific buffalo hunter.”
The Mayer family moved to Pennsylvania when he was five...