The author analyzes a buffalo hunt which occurred in 1869. That spring, many hundreds of Cree, Assiniboine, Stoney, and Metis hunters going to the Plains were joined by a contingent of Wesleyan Methodists and their Native affiliates from Fort Edmonton, Pigeon Lake, Lac Ste. Anne, Lac La Biche, and Whitefish Lake--all located on the most northern and westerly fringes of the northern Great Plains. Their expedition and other hunts joined by Protestant or Roman Catholic missions help identify some of the strategies of competition and cooperation emerging in the western boreal and parkland regions in the midst of predicted but rapid environmental change. Missionaries of the North Saskatchewan river basin joined the multiethnic hunt of 1869 to serve both the spiritual and physical needs of their followers. The aboriginal hunting parties who had long employed cooperative hunts, however, used this occasion as a further means to open up new territories and better coordinate their efforts.