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Actually this all got me thinking about it a bit, and something sort of clicked in me.
I used to love talking to all the old pro shooters back home when I was a kid, and one thing sort of stood out.
They weren't rich men by any streach, most lived out of their saddle bags and had to get by the best they could. So it makes sense thinking about it, the early buff Skinners were usually roo Skinners that saw a chance at a bigger pay day.
There were never that many buff in Australia until around the 2nd world war so a buff hunter back then was usually a roo shooter or dingo trapper most of the year and only switched to buffalo when the opportunity presented itself.

So if you spent even 80% of the time shooting roos or dingoes then a 25/20 was perfect. But if you needed to shoot some buff and all you owned was the one rifle and it was a 25/20 then you probably had to figure out a way to work with what you had.
That's the only reason I could think of to go chasing down buff to point blank range on horseback, because you had to get that close to actually kill it.

Now the blokes in the cities or towns and land owners might be able to buy something bigger like a 303 or one of it wildcats along with a shotgun and pea rifle, but if you made your living off of other people's land on horse back, then you really had to make do with one gun that would do it all for you.

There's some interesting history like that, I remember my grandfather telling me stories about being a rabbit trapper during the depression, he always said he had this funny 22 magnum rifle that was more accurate with 22lr.
That didn't make much sense to me as I knew you could not shoot 22lr in a 22mag as they are different sized bullets.
But he said he used to put in the big rounds when he would see a fox as they were too dear for rabbits and it was good to have more power for the fox as the skins were worth a week's pay.

It wasn't until reading an article a few, years ago that I finally heard about the 22 extra long.
A predecessor of the 22mag and finally that story made sense, he just assumed that the 22mag was the sane as the 22 extra long he had all those years ago.
But since the 50's he only ever owned two guns, a VG Bentley SxS 12ga and a Slazenger model 12 22lr that he bought from smith's sports store in Sydney after his best ever wool sales.
Those were the only new guns he had ever bought and the last ones he ever owned, but they did right by him for over 50 years.

There's only one gun I've owned longer then 5 years and that's grandpa's old shotgun.
How spoiled are we these days.