This has been an educational thread. I have always assumed there were two main varieties of cross sticks: the kind actually in use on the historic buffalo range -- and I'll go with Captain Baylor's -- and all the others, mostly associated with modern BPCR competition. The former had to be simple, free and obtainable along any watercourse; I personally don't believe bolts were used with any regularity, but I'm a cuss.
The others have nothing to do with hunting buffalo and everything to do with achieving consistent scores in modern shooting competition. Here you have your drilled holes, your butterfly nuts, your leather suspension crotches and blanket padding, your copper or brass ferrules to keep the sticks from splitting when pounding in the steel drill rod spikes at the silhouette range, etc.
Back to the originals, do you think your enterprising hide hunter is going to run into town -- possibly drawing the attention of the herds, or Comanches -- for a pair of nicely turned dowels and a bolt and nut at the mercantile? NOT HARDLY. He will have been keeping his eye on all the details of his environment -- from signs of game, Indians and water to a stand of willow or dogwood or whatever in your neck of the woods that might do in a pinch for a wiping stick or cross sticks. And speaking of wiping sticks, it was not uncommon to carry said wiping stick in the barrel of your rifle. And it will also serve as a rest stick, as per here:
http://www.buffalosoldiers-washington.com/CarlisleScans.htmlGo down to the seventh photo. It is grievously mislabeled as a Modoc warrior on the warpath. This is actually a Warms Springs scout firing on Captain Jack's Stronghold in the Modoc war (and was the inspiration for the great two-volume series of guns of the west by Garavaglia and Worman).
By the way, checking native plant lists, I find hickory, dogwood and hazelnut native to Kansas and or the Texas Panhandle, offering perfect cross/wiping stick raw materials to hunters of the Republican and Texas herds.