WHEN BISON GRIEVE: Notes from Montana’s “Fair-Chase” Hunt
By Kathleen Stachowski, New West Unfiltered 12-17-05
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. [End of article]
While I, generally, support the efforts of the Buffalo Field Campaign, this article is a preposterous attribution of human emotions to an animal.
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.
I'm not sure why "Doc Holiday" felt compelled to offer such a vehement response -- we obviously agree on the end solution...designated habitat.
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.
If real science were to prevail and FWP had it's way, bison would be managed as a big game animal. until that occurs, the drama will continue
Comment By Manfred Zeller, 12-21-05Mrs. Stachowski, you imply that hunters should be dismayed to be used as pawns just as your BFC leader implied the Crow agency forfieted their Buffalo tags for political reasons when plain and simple, the Crow agency has more Buffalo than they know what to do with, and could not justify traveling so far to harvest more than they could use. Please do not speak for others. I heard that recently a BFC volunteer, an enrolled tribal member from the West Coast, called this years hunt, a good thing, and a beautiful event, durring a sage burning ceremony, while blessing the hunter and the fallen Bison, and more BFC volunteers helped process and pack the animal out of the field. HMMMMMMM.....
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
Send the bison to New mexico and texas to harbor with others of thier breed.. this would be a warm change..Maybe Gov, Brian and Gove. Richardson & Perry could do so traden...it been done before..Are they not the govenors? do not they have power...Could even get Ted Turner involved the Vermeijo Ranch is huge in Northern New Mexico..
Comment By marcus fuller, 2-01-06In some longgone reverse senario these magnificent animals were part of a continium that their hunt was the transformation into physical usefulfulness by people and a spiritual honoring. In this way both were honored in the exchange. Some still regard them as the true rightfull source for this connectedness. As for the rest there is always beef.
Comment By Marion, 7-18-06Any of you, who think brucellosis is not a real problem, just try taking some of the non tested, potentially infected animals to any other state, outside of the 3 states that deal with them. I don't care how often the officials of that state insisted that they be turned loose, they would balk if they had to deal with them. I doubt the trucks would be allowed to enter.
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.
Brucellosis is a real problem, but it is a politics problem not a science problem. Elk have brucellosis too. We don't corral them and quarantine them when they descend into cattle leases and pastures. We can't do that because they are an important source of income for the state. I think this article is rediculous, and should be published only in activist magazines. Until now I did not think that New West qualified. Not sure what the "unfiltered part means at the top. It probably means that they new the article would be controversial and so the editors wanted a bit of distance from the issue. I think that is a cowardly way to publish. Stand up for what you publish or don't publish it. This article is purely opinion and is detrimental to the cause of wildlife in general in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Wildlife have and will be hunted. Since the passing of the Pittman-Robertson act hunting tags have been the primary source of money for wildlife conservation. Allowing bison to be hunted again increases this revenue and increases the research dollars available to deal with the brucellosis problem.
Comment By Doc Holliday, 7-21-06>Any of you, who think brucellosis is not a real problem, just try taking some of the non tested, potentially infected animals to any other state, outside of the 3 states that deal with them.
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)?