An Old Cowboy's Thoughts about the Return of the Buffalo

Wally McCrae

Wally McCrae, a 70-year-old cattleman who has 30,000 acres in northeast Montana, is a third-generation rancher in the area. In a recent interview for public radio, McCrae, whose land is not far from a Cheyenne Indian reservation, gave his thoughts about the re-introduction of buffalo to the area: "People around here are more concerned about buffalo than they are about weeds. It's just an easy thing to be opposed to because they don't know anything about them. There's nothing wrong with a buffalo. I wouldn't mind somebody having buffalo across the fence from me, as long as he had a good fence and kept the stupid things in. Maybe a few buffalo scattered around wouldn't hurt. We stole the land and stole the way of life and religion and language from the Native Americans. Maybe we ought to keep a few token buffalo around somewhere to remind us what a bunch of jerks we were when we stole it all away from them."

Little Bull and His Papa: Latest Pics

Grandson Devin, son Tim.

Good Judgment

Gray Wolves

In a recent decision, a federal district judge in Montana ruled that gray wolves in the northern Rockies must be returned to the Endangered Species List. The decision is expected to halt plans by Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to allow public hunts for wolves. An inordinate number of wolves had been killed since the delisting. Wolves in those three states were removed from the endangered list in March following a decade-long restoration effort. Organizations that included the American Humane Society, The Defenders of Wildlife, and the Sierra Club sued to overturn the decision to delist the wolves. The region has an estimated 2,000 wolves.

Incidentally, I respect the federal judge in the above case, Donald Molloy. A couple of his other decisions, among many that could be considered environmentally friendly:

2002 — shut down 176 million board-feet of salvage logging on the Bitterroot National Forest, ruling that the Bush administration and the U.S. Forest Service illegally cut off public appeals.

2003 — ordered W.R. Grace and Co. to pay the federal government $54.5 million to help clean up the company’s asbestos mess in Libby, Montana, the largest fine ordered after a trial in EPA Superfund history.

"Enduring as bedrock"

I had heard about a book with the curious title Buffalo for the Broken Heart. After reading a few favorable reviews, I bought the book. Love it. One of my favorite passages is the author's encounter with a buffalo that had strayed from the herd of the nearby Badlands National Park in South Dakota: "I drove too fast, and when I came over a dusty rise I nearly ran into an enormous bull buffalo. He reclined luxuriously in the center of the dirt road, stretched out in the sun like a two-thousand-pound tomcat. By the time I'd braked, I'd gotten way too close and was struggling to get the gear shift into reverse when he raised his head and looked straight into my eyes . . . . His head was the size of a dishwasher. . . . I was frozen in place. We stared at each other for perhaps a minute . . . . leisurely, the head dipped and the legs pulled under the great beast. The short, paintbrush tail whipped in the dust and the bull rocked once, twice, and up onto his feet. He shook like a dog, creating a cloud of dry South Dakota soil . . . . Then he slowly raised the tiny, black hoof of his left rear foot, stretched his head out, and, as if the hoof were a ballet slipper, scratched his neck below the long woolly goatee. He took one last look at me before he moved off the road . . . . "

Was this chance encounter with the woolly bully an omen? Well, author Dan O'Brien, on the brink of financial ruin on his cattle ranch, which he called the Broken Heart, later decided to substitute buffalo for cattle. Unlike cattle, Dan knew that buffalo could pretty much take care of themselves and could endure the harsh Dakota winters. The book is a smooth read as it relates the struggles of living and ranching in the desolate area. His character portrayals of his neighbors and his descriptions of everyday life on a buffalo ranch gripped me. A Boston Globe book reviewer wrote that O'Brien "by God can tell a story . . . . This is the book you need to read next." Indeed.

And this passage as the author reflects on his herd during a cold Dakota morning: "When I kneel and dig my hands through the curl of dormant winter grass to the earth below, I imagine the vibration of hooves. I feel buffalo moving within it all and understand that they are constant, enduring as bedrock, powerful as the prairie wind."

Time to Graze on Hops and Barley

After the Ottawa (IL) Triathlon, 2002. One of seven triathlons I did that summer. Beer is still on my agenda.

For the first time since I began doing triathlons in 1991, I won't be doing a tri this season. Although my buddy Bruce, the Iron Bison, will try to talk me into doing a tri or two, just ain't gonna happen. Maybe next year. I'll continue to run, swim and bike, but at a leisurely pace.

Family and Fireworks

Red Chief, in a new buffalo shirt, displays a ribbon for his participation in the kids run prior to the adults 5K race on campus on the Fourth. The run was about a half mile, and although many kids stopped and walked to catch their breath during the run, Red Chief ran the entire course without stopping. Buffalo power. It's time to let him loose as a wild, free-range buffalo on the Buffalo Trace trail at Mahomet.

Princess, Red Chief, Ali Baba, and Timothy Bull Daddy in my driveway watching neighborhood fireworks on July 3. Ali was quite nervous, trembling much of the time during the loud booming.

Sweet Buffalo

In leaving for a new job, my buddies at my old job presented me with this wonderful cake a couple of days ago. How appropriate. These people know me all too well. It is with great sadness that I leave them.

Damn it was tough cutting that cake. The one and only time I will eat buffalo.

Buffalove

Royalty at 30: The Princess Ruled on Her Birthday Sunday

Night of the 100th Moon Run

The herd celebrated the 100th full moon run Wednesday by running the 5-mile Buffalo Trace trail, which was brilliantly lit by the moon and accompanying swarms of lightning bugs. Really a pleasant experience.

Twilight on the Trace

A peaceful scene that I shot from the trail at Buffalo Trace trail at Mahomet. Many years ago the area was a feasting site for wild buffalo, who munched on tallgrass praire plants and sipped water from the nearby Sangamon River. I paused to take these photos while running on the trail a couple of days ago. A nice sunset when wildflowers abound is a favorite time to run the trail, as is winter with sparkling snow illuminated by a full moon.A field of wildflowers that borders the trail. A while later . . .

. . . a group of eight deer were browsing on the vegetation in the same field. The photo is fuzzy and I got only two of the deer in the shot. The group slowly moved away at my approach. Fantastic sight.

The trail is interrupted in a few places by small streams, which can be quite muddy after rains like we've had. The makeshift plank bridge on the left was nice, but sometimes it was easier just to run right through the muck to cross the stream.

The Moon Master, my buffalo buddy Chris Migotsky, resorts to a little walking near the end of an all-day 56-mile run on the Buffalo Trace trail. He's not mentally right. Chris organized this week's "seven-day run as many miles as you can" race. So far, I've been out there every day, logging five miles a day.

The Face of a Mass Murderer

"Buffalo Bill" Cody got his nickname by killing 4,280 buffalo in eighteen months (1867-68). He did this as part of a contract to supply meat to railroad workers building the western railroads. That face reminds me of a certain modern-day colonel who was responsible for the deaths of millions of chickens condemned to a deep fryer.

MIA from the Herd

I've missed many a trail run with the herd lately, but starting Sunday that will end as I begin daily trail runs of at least five miles per day for the next week, rain or shine. Head 'em up, move 'em out. I'll try to take some photos on the Buffalo Trace Trail as I run.

Cousin to a Star

Cody II and me at the Indian Pow Wow.

How do you like that photo above of me and my new lawn mower? Yup, bought myself a buffalo. The price of gas being what it is, I can sell my mower and my car and turn the buffalo loose on my lawn as well as ride him to work.

Not practical, you say? Yeah, you're right. It's not really my buffalo. It belongs to a gentleman from Minnesota, Ron Fogel, who also owned the famous buffalo Cody, star of screen and television. Cody was in the movie Dances with Wolves, and the video above tells the story of the Oreo-eating, beer guzzling Hollywood bison. Cody's obituary is HERE. What a story. Wolf Woman and I met Cody II (above, with me), cousin of the deceased Cody, at a pow wow of the Kickapoo Indians near Moraine View State Park near Bloomington this past weekend. This is the closest I will ever be to a buffalo. I was able to pat him on his steel-wool-like head.

Good Times - Memorial Day Weekend

Red Chief and his Princess Mother. That look on his face tells me the Princess probably said something that irked the Chief.

Little Bull with Bull Daddy (son Tim) and Mama Lanata.

Wolf Woman's birthday was on Memorial Day weekend, and she came over to my mom's house to meet my sister and her family. We surprised her with a birthday cake.

While in the batter's box during a 1932 World Series game, Babe Ruth pointed to seats in the outfield, reputedly predicting he would hit a home run to that spot. And he promptly did just that. Red Chief (above) calls a shot to the outfield at Westview School during a ferocious pitch and hit session with me on Memorial Day. The Chief then hit a slow grounder to third. Some day he will clear the fence with a mighty shot.

Bring it on!

Busy these days with a flooded basement yesterday and watching Red Chief all day today and tomorrow. Quick post and a political cartoon for now. Obama . . . by a knockout.

Going Lunar: Seven Days on the Trail

I have signed up for a seven-day trail race at the Buffalo Trace Trail at Mahomet. For this informal race each runner will strive to complete five miles on each of the seven consecutive days June 15-21. The organizer of the race is my lunatic buddy and fellow buffalo Chris Migotsky (above left, with me after completing a 31-mile trail race in a single day at Owen-Putnam State Forest in Indiana a few years ago). Those long legs of the tall Moon Master, as Chris is known to the herd, meant long strides, which I had to keep up with while we ran the trail together. Chris has been the coordinator of the full moon runs on the Buffalo Trace Trail, when the herd gathers on the night of each full moon during the year and runs the 5-mile trail, sometimes under beautiful moonlight, sometimes in bone-chilling cold, sometimes in a driving rainstorm. The moon run of June 18 during the trail race will be the 100th moon run.

Coming Soon: Recap of the Memorial Day Weekend. Don't miss adventures with the Wolf Woman, the Princess, Red Chief, Little Bull, Bull Daddy and Lanata, and the migration of my sister's herd from up north to the central Illinois prairie.

On Memorial Day - Remember Them

A Bison by Any Other Name is a Buffalo

A Yellowstone bison. Or is it a water buffalo?

I have just finished chewing on my computer because of the following message, from an anonymous source, on the WEBSITE of the Buffalo Allies of Bozeman (Montana), a group dedicated to the conservation of the Yellowstone buffaloes: "You are not helping your cause by misnaming the creatures you wish to protect. The only true buffaloes are cape buffaloes and water buffaloes which I believe here in North America are all kept in zoos. If you wish to protect bison, then that's what you should call them and your organization. That is their proper name of which you should be aware. To further promote the misnaming of these animals may be counterproductive. I support the protection of bison but will never support any organization that doesn't use their proper name."

Good God. I just wanna smack people like that. Bison are commonly known as buffalo. No one needs narrow-minded views and silly "correctness." Using the term buffalo counterproductive? What crap. We're not talking about Asia or South Africa here, for Christ's sake. Look at the website. It says Bozeman. That's in Montana, which is in the United States. The message might have been written by someone with a grudge, or a troublemaker. If he or she is neither of those, then they are just plain aloof, or pretty damn silly. C'mon, just climb out of your high chair and do what you can for the buffalo, or bison. If the name is such an issue, then disappear, please. You are counterproductive.

An Evening with the Family Herd

The Princess daughter and Red Chief in a photo taken a couple of days ago.

Red Chief and his uncle Tim discussing the malfunctions of the Bush administration . . . or something just as silly.

Fellow Icons of the West in Trouble

With the drastic reduction of buffalo over the winter at Yellowstone, where the only continuously wild herd struggles to survive, we now get THIS news about horses out west. I know there are enough caring people out there to help these animals, but these are situations that need immediate action.

Alaska, the Undoing of Tom's Tribe

A grizzly would find Ali to be a nuisance.

I've been watching with great interest "The Alaska Experiment" on the Discovery Channel. On the website HERE, we meet the four groups of volunteers for the experiment in the Alaskan wild for a three-month survival tour. After watching the first episodes, I wonder how much longer the dad and his two college-age daughters can stand one another. If I were the dad of the two girls, I would lock them out of the shelter and leave them for the bears. If you've seen the show, you would understand why I feel this way.

(Reference: See my cast of characters in the right-hand column) Now, I wonder how I would fare in this show with, say, the Wolf Woman as my partner. Now the Wolf Woman loves animals, especially wolves, and very especially cats (she has five, and feeds a stray outside regularly). Wolf Woman and I would probably lose a lot of weight; both of us would find it very difficult to kill an animal. In fact, the Wolf Woman doesn't even kill cockroaches in her house, preferring to "lead" them out the door, as she says. But she does like to cook, so maybe I could look for the carcass of an already-killed animal in the wilds.

Or if I did the show with Princess and Red Chief. The Chief would want to go out and play with the animals or have a snowball fight, while the Princess, once the initial rations were gone, would be ready to go home. I can hear her now: "Dad, the Princess doesn't want to be eaten by a bear."

Or, with Tim and his faithful hound Ali Baba. Ali loves snow, and to see him prance around in a deep snow is a laugh riot. So, he would probably love Alaska, and would be a pretty good watchdog. I would expect a lot of barking at bears and other critters. Tim would want to know where he could get a Marie Callender pot pie or where the nearest fast food place was.

And if it were just me and Maddie . . . well . . . Maddie would cower in a corner of a cabin and not be seen for the entire winter, except occasionally to sit in a sun spot.

Considering all this, I think I'll just stay in the wilds of central Illinois.

On Sunday . . . Hang with Mom

Kennekuk on the AT

"Kennekuk" (Grant Cunningham) somewhere in the mountains of Virginia.

Grant Cunningham, the hubby of one of my co-workers, began hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT) in March and intends to do the whole 2,174 miles of the trail stretching from Georgia, where he started, to Maine. THIS blog, maintained by his wife Connie, tells of his progress. Click on the reference to the AT map on the blog; shows the whole trail. Grant estimates it will take him about five months to hike the entire trail, and his attitude is good: if he can't finish the entire thing, no big deal. He'll stop when he's had enough. I'm jealous of his journey. I'm what they call a section hiker of the AT, having done two sections stretching from Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, south through the Shenandoah Valley to Waynesboro, Virginia. I hope to hop on the AT again sometime this year. Grant is a "thru hiker," doing the entire trail in one span. And he has the trail name (most thru hikers have one of these) of Kennekuk, the running club to which both he and I belong. My advice to Grant: Be a buffalo. You will endure.

A Friend of the Buffalo

This 1908 sketch and text by Charles M. Russell mourns the demise of the buffalo of the Old West. ("You sleeping relick of the past, if I but had my way Id cloth(e) your frame with meat an(d) hide and wake you up to day.")

Russell's painting "When the Land Belonged to God" depicts hundreds of buffalo crossing the Missouri River. Charlie's intent was to show a magnificent array of buffalo in bygone days, long before human settlement on the plains. The original painting hangs in the Montana Historical Society in Helena.

Charles M. Russell painting in a tent.

Charlie Russell in his studio.

When I left Yellowstone last October, the buffalo herd numbered 4,700. Hunting, slaughter, and as many as 700 dead from the unusually cruel winter has reduced the herd to less than 2,300. The actual number left could be even lower.

Charlie Russell would probably be furious about this.

Charles M. Russell, one of my favorite artists (I have prints of two of his paintings at home), was a prolific illustrator of the Old West. And, he was fascinated by buffalo. He painted at least 42 representations of buffalo hunts (mostly by Indians), and buffaloes were the main subject or a part of hundreds of his works. Even his personal stationery had a buffalo skull at the top. Russell, who lived with the Blood Indians during the winter of 1888-1889, also had a deep respect for Native Americans and their reverence for the land. ''Their God was the sun, their church was all outdoors and their only book was nature, but they knew all the pages,'' he wrote.

Charlie Russell was cantankerous, being described in 1909 as "fire and voluble, constantly talking and full of stories. These are the greatest collection of wit combined with vulgarity I ever heard.” One of my favorite Russell quotes comes from a talk he gave to the Great Falls, Montana, civic boosters in the 1920s: "In my book a pioneer is a man who turned all the grass upside down, strung bob-wire over the dust that was left, poisoned the water and cut down the trees, killed the Indian who owned the land, and called it progress. If I had my way, the land here would be like God made it, and none of you sons of bitches would be here at all."

Upon Russell's death in 1926, this account appeared in the New York Herald Tribune. Headed THE END OF THE TRAIL, the text is by Gutzon Borglum, who created the Presidential monuments at Mount Rushmore.

"Charles Marion Russell was of the self-reliant race of lone explorers, a pioneer, a student, a painter of life. I've read the rubbish about him, how he drank, lived with the Indians, trapped, punched cows, which has filled columns with cheap newspaper gossip.

"Of course he drank, and I'll wager he could drink in competition with the fabled Danes, dry up the swollen streams to let his lady pass. Gamble? Certainly! He gambled his life to record the sob of a lone trapper. Swear? I hope he swore -- and as picturesquely as Shakespeare, as meaningfully as Washington."

They are considering reintroducing buffalo to the CHARLES M. RUSSELL NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE in Montana. I think Charlie would like that.

Tarmac

Rumblings on the Prairie

The epicenter of the earthquake at 4:30 this morning was not at West Salem, Illinois, a hundred miles south of here, as reported in the national media. It was on Maplecrest Drive in Champaign, where I repeatedly banged my head against the wall during my breakfast of rage about the killing of almost half of the Yellowstone buffalo herd. I regularly read dozens of blogs and newspaper accounts out of the Yellowstone area about the buffalo fiasco. Plenty of well-meaning folks out there, but positive action and results on behalf of the buffalo are tough to come by. Pass the Tylenol.

UPDATE, 10:16 a.m. - Earthquake aftershocks just felt. A good shaking of our office building. Must be the buffalo ghost herd on the move.

The Laugh of the Little Bull

Grandson Devin's latest photo. Definitely a Buffalo Warrior.

Life is Cruel

Buffalo mom and her newborn calf at a Yellowstone roadside last Friday. Heavy snow cover in some areas prevented grazing.

Every day I check Ralph Maughan's Wildlife Reports (link in right-hand column). Ralph gives us much useful info on wildlife, especially on wolves and Yellowstone buffalo. THIS account with photos is crushing. Maybe Yellowstone visitors should wear THIS apparel. (I'm trying to inject a little humor into a very bleak situation.). The numbers of slaughtered bison at Yellowstone continue to rise.

Hope

Those words, spoken by Buffalo Field Campaign media coordinator Stephany Seay, give me hope. For an excellent interview with Stephany, who gives a good summation of the buffalo situation at Yellowstone, listen to the audio at THIS site.

Happiness

The simple things are the best: Seeing joy on the face of Red Chief as he flies his new Spiderman kite. Click on the photo to get a closeup of a happy six-year-old.

Road Warriors

Fed up with mistreatment, gangs of buffaloes roamed the roads of Yellowstone National Park recently, surrounding vehicles and displaying such protest antics as sticking out their tongues. (I make light of this but I get as angry as anyone about the whole mess. THIS latest report and Jim Mcdonald's excellent comments below the article details the mismanagement of America's herd.)

Just Trying to Survive

With the recent removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, the wolf probably faces more immediate endangerment from those who would kill them outright. THIS article tells the story well. For an example of how people are divided about the wolf out west, read THIS.

Buffalo Warrior: Shock and Awe at Yellowstone

When all else fails, a way to stop the slaughter of Yellowstone buffaloes. Arm the bison!