Environment

Rifles Won’t Be the Only Things Shooting at Montana’s Bison Hunt

By Brooke Hewes, 9-19-05

The on-again, off-again fling between Montana and a bison hunt appears—at least for now—to be on. Come winter, fifty hunters will sling rifles over their shoulders in hopes of bagging one of Yellowstone’s 4,900 bison when they wander outside the national park.

And while they are at it, hunters might want to glance over their shoulder and see who’s watching.

“The BFC is going to have a heyday with this, as perhaps they should,� says Bill O’Connell, an outfitter in Bozeman and member of the Gallatin Wildlife Association. “But some poor guy is going to be standing out there trying to hunt with cameras capturing his every move.�

Indeed, Dan Brister, program director for the Buffalo Field Campaign — a bison-advocacy group based in West Yellowstone — says he already has a commitment from ABC news: “We’re going to document the hunt and show the American people what it looks like on the ground—show them that this isn’t a 'fair chase' hunt.�

Negative publicity was one of several reasons last year’s proposed hunt was cancelled just days before it was slated to begin. Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission called off what was to be the state’s first bison hunt in fourteen years after complaints poured in from all corners of the state: the newly elected governor worried about Montana’s reputation; hunters criticized inadequate habitat; and many residents, like Brister, questioned the accuracy of the hunt’s “fair-chase� premise.

So what gives? Or more accurately, who gave?

According to Melissa Frost at Montana's FWP, a lot and everyone.

“This year’s hunt includes a much greater area,� said Frost, the agency’s Information and Education Program Manager for Region 3. “It also takes place during 90 days instead of 30.�

Last year’s hunt would have allowed 10 kills from Jan. 15 to Feb. 15 on 426,000 acres of public and private land north and west of Yellowstone National Park; 460,000 acres have been marked fair-game this year, and the 50 permits will be divided evenly between two consecutive sessions: the first will run from Nov. 15 to Jan. 14, the second one from Jan. 15 to Feb. 15.

O’Connell says he supports this year’s hunt mostly to avoid giving Montana a black eye in the national media. He is, however, far from satisfied with the changes.

“Only about 60,000 of the acres allotted as habitat during the hunt are actually used by bison,� he says. “The rest is unsuitable — it is mostly steep, mountainous terrain inhospitable to bison in the winter.�

Of the 60,000 acres of “suitable� habitat, much of it is on Horse Butte, he says, where bison migrate each spring to calve and where the group Horse Butte Neighbors of Bison was formed by residents adamantly opposed to having bison hunted in their backyards.

“And so that leaves the meadows along the Madison River, [and] the main problem there is that it is an absolute set-up for a media spectacle,� says O’Connell.

Perhaps most celebrated, however, are the changes made regarding the hunt’s management. Last year’s hunt would have fallen under the joint jurisdiction of Montana’s Department of Livestock and MTFWP—two of the five state and federal agencies that share management of the Yellowstone herd as established by the Interagency Bison Management Plan in 2000; the other three partners are the National Park Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and the United States Forest Service; MTFWP will carry the reins alone this year. Furthermore, DOL—the agency responsible for pushing migrating bison park back into the park each winter and spring—will halt hazing during the hunt. This change, says Amy McNamara of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, is a great move towards managing the Yellowstone herd as wildlife instead of livestock.

“Our goal is to see bison managed as other game species in Montana, as wildlife. And the hunt is a step in that direction,� she says. “This is an opportunity for all of us to see that bison can leave the park, not be hazed, and not create problems.�

The problems McNamara refers to center on the transmission of brucellosis, a bacterial disease that infects livestock, wildlife and humans. It's transmitted through fluids and tissues associated with a live birth or an aborted fetus. Pregnant, infected cows run the risk of aborting their first calf. And while no cure exists and roughly 50 percent of the bison have tested positive for exposure to the disease; infection rates, however, are unknown. Furthermore, there has never been a documented case of transmission from bison to cattle in the wild.

Still, the fear is pervasive.

“It just takes two cases to loose our brucellosis-free status,� says Karen Cooper at the DOL. “Montana has been brucellosis-free since 1985, and it was a long process getting there. Many cattle were destroyed, and it cost the state $35 million.�

In fact, the disease, or at least fear of the disease, is powerful enough to guide management of the Yellowstone herd, which is managed not as “wildlife� by the state of Montana, but as “a species in need of disease management.� Brucellosis drives the hazing operation; brucellosis is the difference between bison and other wild game species; and brucellosis is why the DOL carries the management weight it does—a point which brings many to the other side of Frost’s optimistic fence. Or at least to the top, where O’Connell, McNamara and groups like the Montana Wildlife Federation precariously waffle between reluctant approval of the hunt and general dismay over bison management.

“The hunt was drafted by people who view and treat bison as livestock to control disease,� says O’Connell. “Even MTFWP is admitting that it was the Board of Livestock that drafted and approved the hunt.�

In fact, one day before the hunt was tentatively approved by the MTFWP Commission in July, the Board of Livestock set nine contingencies for its approval of the hunt relating to when, where and how it could be conducted. Among their conditions was the resumption of hazing and capturing if extreme winter weather pushes too many bison out of the park in pursuit of food.

And that, says O’Connell, is his chief “beef� with the hunt, as well as much of the IBMP’s management language in general: “DOL’s policy towards bison is all about capture, hazing, slaughter, vaccination and neutering … It is supposed to be a 5-agency management team, but if you ever attend a meeting, the two agencies [DOL and MTFWP] run the show.�

To this end, O’Connell laments the death of HB544 in the 2005 Montana Legislature. The bill sought a total transfer of bison management to MTFWP. Additionally, it would have classified bison as a “valued native wildlife in the state of Montana� and tacked on the adjective “fair-chase� to the public hunt clause.

“Fair-chase,� is not just a feel good option for the hunt; it is a requirement. According to the 2003 Montana Legislature, a bison hunt cannot conflict with the IBMP mandate “to maintain a wild, free-ranging population of bison.� Furthermore, according to the Commission’s July 7 tentative approval, these wild and free-ranging animals could be harvested only “under ethical hunting conditions�—which they parenthetically defined as “fair chase.� And since “to maintain� connotes a continuation, the presumption is that the Yellowstone herd is wild and free ranging now—two adjectives that both opponents and some proponents agree doesn't paint an accurate picture right now because of hazing and a lack of suitable habitat.

“If you look at the public land around the park, there is a lot of land suitable for bison that they are not allowed on because of cattle,� says Craig Sharpe, executive director of the Montana Wildlife Federation. “If they managed the cattle instead of the bison, we wouldn’t be having a discussion about habitat—we think there is enough land there.�

Habitat aside, for some, the hunt raises ethical quandaries: is it ethical, or even sport, to pursue an animal as docile bison, which the BFC argue act more like cattle than their relatively nimble and wildgame counterparts?

“Bison face their predators; that is how they evolved. They had the strength to do that before guns came along,� Brister says.

BFC activists liken hunting buffalo to shooting a couch or a cow. And by shooting those bison who do wander, they say, genes of the very attribute we should be trying to promote are eliminated: wildness.

Sharpe disagrees.

“Bison soon learn what a hunter is,� he says. “A board member from Utah said it took him a week and a half to shoot one. Bison are not stupid—they know where the grass is, when to migrate and they will become savvy to hunters.�

In 2004, Wyoming, Alaska, Utah, South Dakota, and Arizona all held successful wild bison hunts.

Montana officials are calling this year’s hunt a demonstration. They hope to illustrate the potential of a wild bison hunt in Montana as a source of revenue and a tool for controlling the growing herd (the latest tally exceeded the herd’s population 3,000 cap by nearly 65 percent). Whether or not the hunt will demonstrate either of these goals is uncertain; what is certain, however, is that all sides have a lot of shifting to do before Montana’s first bison hunt in 15 years can be called an amicable success.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the ending date of the first phase of year's hunt and the acreage and administrators of last year's planned hunt. It also incorrectly reported that 50 percent of the herd have tested positive for brucellosis. Instead, 50 percent has tested positive for the antibodies. New West regrets the errors.

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