Every cowboy action shooting alias begins as a name on a page. The interesting part is deciding what sort of person might answer to it.
Bison Jay grew out of central Texas cattle country: a man old enough to remember the Republic in family stories, seasoned by the trails, and elected sheriff when railroad, wire, and drought were changing the range around him. The aim was not to assemble a list of famous events, but to build a life that could have moved through them.
A name with a reason
The alias comes from a stampede at the Platte. Jay Tanner holds the point of a running herd long enough to bend it into a mill, and a cook says he stood like an old bull bison in the current. It is the sort of name a man would never give himself—and therefore the sort that might last.
“The name stuck. Nobody argues with a cook.”
This site will keep the story in one place while recording the real matches, research, clothing choices, and lessons that continue to shape the alias.
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