WHEN BISON GRIEVE: Notes from Montana’s “Fair-Chase” Hunt
By Kathleen Stachowski, Unfiltered 12-17-05
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A typical scene from Yellowstone country, yet heart-breaking in its timeless beauty: Three bull bison bedded down in winter-yellow bunch grass and sagebrush. A fourth grazes nearby. Winter’s biting chill has arrived; heavy snow is imminent. As they have done for eons, wild bison settle in and prepare to endure a season of cold. These are descendents of the fortunate 23 who escaped the great extermination of the 1870s, finding refuge in remote Yellowstone. The serene and abiding image they create today belies their turbulent, tragic past.
Into this setting walk seven humans -- four intent on taking a life, three determined to witness and record that passing.
Some 50, maybe 60 yards away, the bison observed our intrusion with little concern. The hunting tag-holder dropped to the ground and supported her rifle on a blue backpack. She settled in while the three men in her crew coached her on shot placement. During the eternity before she fired, I fumbled the camera with trembling hands and wondered, "Is this what Montana considers fair-chase hunting? Shooting an animal not even on his feet?" The shot exploded.
Whether he was hit that time, I don’t know. The resting animals stood up, more startled, it seemed, than frightened. The targeted animal walked slowly to the right. Unlike other ungulates, bison typically don’t flee; our continent’s largest terrestrial mammal has the luxury of facing down his foe. It’s likely that Yellowstone bison figure the wolf as their most lethal threat, yet they will stand their ground against fang and claw, and usually come out unscathed. But unlike wolves, bullets don’t back down, and the second shot rang, then a third. If there was a fourth, I don’t remember.
He fell, and the scene became an impressionistic blur: storm clouds gathering behind Electric Peak, pungent perfume from low, gnarled sagebrush. A bright patch of snow, brighter splashes of blaze orange, of blood. Congratulatory calls of "Good shot!" from the crew. As the bison lay dying, the silence was broken now and again with incongruous giggles from the shooter. Nervous relief, perhaps.
Do bison grieve? Decide for yourself. The remaining three slowly gathered around their fallen brother, the carriage of their tails registering distress. One, in particular, seemed especially anguished; he pawed the motionless shoulder as if to rouse him. Getting no response, he nudged the body with his head, then with the shank of his horn. Again and again he nudged and butted and pushed; finally, in an act of utter pathos, he lay down in resignation next to the body. Foam tinged pink with blood frothed from a bullet hole.
The crew was unhappy with this turn of events; the tag-holder complained that the meat would spoil. "How long are they going to stay?" she asked in exasperation. "They need time to mourn," my companion replied, exasperation in his own voice.
She drove them off with a couple of shots and duct-taped her tag to the lifeless horn.
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Since the documentation of this death, several more bison have been gunned down while grazing. In another instance, no fewer than 11 distressed animals surrounded their dying herdmate.
Yellowstone’s bison are subjected to hazing, capture, quarantine, and slaughter by Montana’s Department of Livestock when they migrate out of the park. And although they are not considered wildlife and are afforded no habitat in the state, Montana has sandwiched a three-month "sport hunt" into the on-going DOL persecution. Buffalo Field Campaign, while not an anti-hunting group, opposes this hunt as one more politically-driven tool with which to exterminate wild bison on America's public land to benefit the livestock industry. BFC volunteers are in the field every day documenting this crime against American wildlife and working for the day when Montana designates bison habitat on public lands surrounding Yellowstone. Information and photo and video documentation are available at http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org.
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The author joined BFC volunteers in Gardiner, MT to document two deaths on the day following Thanksgiving.
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Comments
The American bison has been embraced as the symbol of the American West, as the mythical symbol of what was. It is the focus of the "love" of those who feel some nebulous, collective guilt about the hunting of the species to near extinction in the 19th century. For that reason, bison populations are "off limits" to management by hunting. This is ridiculous in the extreme.
The Montana Department of Livestock kill more bison "hazing" them back into the park than will ever be killed by hunters. The DOL just has the good sense to do it out of the sight of cameras.
The Yellowstone ecosystem will only support so many bison and other ungulates. If we stop managing the bison, they will over populate to the point where there isn't enough forage to support them. Then, they will die of starvation - as will all the other animals dependent on the forage to live. This happened in the early days of Yellowstone when the elk were allowed to multiply unchecked and over-grazed the park.
There never will be vast herds of bison that cover the paire from horizon to horizon. That is an unrealistic expectation that we need to get past. Due to over population, greed and disastrous environmental practices brought to the Intermountain west by Europeans, we are lucky we are able to save the bison that live in the park. Certainly, if the cattle industry had their way, the bison, the wolf and the grizzly bear would be eliminated because they compete for resources with domestic cattle.
Instead of trying to fathom the mental processes of the bison, we should be focusing on expanding the grazing land available to them. We need to address the real "problems," which include the unrealistic and scientifically unsupported posit that bison might transmit brucellosis to domestic cattle, the Montana DOL practice of hazing the bison back into the park with helicopters and motor vehicles and the Church Universal and Triumphant's refusal to deal reasonably on the issue of grazing rights on their lands that border Yellowstone in Park County.
The most serious threat to the bison is habitat encroachment, not hunting. Every person who buys a 20 acre "ranchette" in bison habitat, fences it off and develops it does more harm to the long term survival of the bison than a hundred hunters. The people building in the Gallatin River Valley, Big Sky, along the Madison River, Gardiner, et cetera are destroying bison habitat that cannot be replaced. The real question we should be asking ourselves is, "How can we preserve this habitat?"
These real problems kill many more bison each year than hunters. If we are to preserve what is left of the bison herd, these issues must be addressed and resolved. The time for emotion has passed. It is time to objectively address the real threat to the long term survival of the bison herd in the Yellowstone ecosystem.
Perhaps he failed to read the paragraph following my narrative of one kill, which addresses the on-going DOL hazing and slaughter. And by the way, Doc, the cameras are indeed running while DOL is doing their dirty work...just log-on and take a look. It's disgusting.
Perhaps Doc's hunting feathers got so ruffled that he failed to notice that THIS hunt is singled out as a bogus, politically-driven "solution" to the "management problem" as promoted by DOL, FWP, the state of Montana, and the other players in the sorry Inter-agency Bison Management Plan... one more way to eliminate an animal that the state doesn't even consider wildlife and for whom it refuses to designate habitat (again, it's there in that last paragraph...). I guess I thought that hunters would be dismayed to be used as pawns for such an ignoble end.
Just because the ludicrous notion that bison will transmit brucellosis to cattle isn't addressed in this piece doesn't mean that it hasn't been addressed in detail elsewhere by me and many, many others. This piece is simply one person's account of witnessing a death, and is written for all those who oppose the slaughter of Yellowstone's bison but are unable to stand witness themselves.
I disagree that "the time for emotion has passed." People who are well-versed in the science and politics of this issue need not forego emotion when dealing with the slaughter of America's last wild, free-roaming bison herd. I, for one, continue to shed tears over Montana's heinous treatment of these beautiful creatures even while I continue to work for them on a practical level.
Finally, anyone who has spent time with bison knows that they are gregarious, social animals who form strong bonds with each other. It is arrogant of human beings to believe that we are the only ones who have a claim to emotions like happiness and grief.
Doc is right about your overwhelming emotions clouding the BFCs long term vision on the management of this herd. Your opinion and Canyons very different opinion on the direction of this hunt lead me to believe the BFCs infrastructure is crumbling, and you may need to reorganize when appointing board members in 06. Acknowledging this hunt and next years hunt as a good thing may help the BFC stay in the field and may help establish a more "viable" herd within Michigain, oh, I mean Montana, which we both agree on. Right? MZ
Since there is no way to observe the passage of the disease from one animal to another outside of a lab, the same bs argument could be made by elk lovers. I don't care if the reliability rate is only 50-80% for vaccine, every year there would be than many less infected animals to deal with until eventually they were all gone.
This, once again, is a political problem. NOT a bison problem. What you are saying is that managing the bison, or even allowing them to exist in a wild state, (bison who are innoculated for brucellosis are NOT wild bison, they are managed, domesticed wild animals), is inconvenient to the cattle industry. That's a non-starter.
There has never been a documented case of brucellosis infection going from a bison to a domestic bovine. Period. This is reality. If we managed all our resources on the principle of "what if," as we do with the bison, where would we be? No where, because you can't deal with things that never happen.
There are more than enough domestic cattle in the world. There is more than enough grazing land available in Montana - at bargain prices compared to other places. There is one wild bison herd left. Are we so short sighted that we will wipe out our heritage so we can buy cheap hamburgers from McDonald's, (which I realize, mainly, uses South American beef, but you get the idea)?