Finding Bison Jay
How a cattleman, a sheriff, and one hard-earned trail name became a cowboy action shooting alias.
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Central Texas · 1887
Bison Jay
Cattleman · Sheriff
A cowboy action shooting alias built from the cattle trails, hard country, and unfinished business of the Texas frontier.
SASS #92710
Dispatches & discoveries
Trail Notes
Reading the Central Texas Range
Why limestone, live oak, drought, wire, and a very young railroad town matter to the story.
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What Belongs in a Shooting Ledger
A simple record of matches, category, score, and the gear carried that day—nothing more than it needs to be.
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A life shaped by cattle, conflict, and weather.
Jay Tanner was born with Texas, rode the Kansas trails, served two years with the Frontier Battalion, and came home from the Platte with a name he never chose for himself.
By 1887, he is a cattleman in the Big Valley bottoms and the first sheriff of a county forming around the new railroad town of Goldthwaite.
“A feud eats the men who feed it.”Meet Bison Jay