Don’t believe everything
you hear about the West. While some Western myths are mere
entertainment, others can kill you. Like thinking a 4-wheel drive
provides traction on ice.
Recently, some dangerously
incorrect statements gained serious media attention during the
first hunt in 15 years for bison leaving Yellowstone Park. Calling
the hunt a slaughter, protesters said buffalo are so docile that
killing one is like shooting a Buick or – as one hunter said
– “like shooting a cow.” Those statements are worth just what
they cost you.
Lying in a snowdrift at 30 below zero, I
once watched lead balls bounce off a buffalo’s hide. Hunters
poured more powder, stuffed more lead balls into their
muzzle-loading rifles until one wounded a bull, but it didn’t
fall. The other bull we’d bought to shoot that day grew
agitated, snorting and pawing while we crouched in the snow. I
could have used a few smooth-tongued activists between me and those
bulls, or, after we survived the hunt, helping us butcher as our
hands froze to our knives.
Maybe you’ve seen photos
of a lone bison bull resting on a hillside. Looks gentle, right?
That’s because experienced photographers know it’s
risky to get close to the critters if they’re awake.
National park warnings blare “Buffalo are dangerous. Stay
in your cars” because buffalo kill or gore visitors and demolish
vehicles. The grouches of the bovine world, bison are so easily
annoyed, so unpredictable, that even a buffalo rancher never turns
his back on one. Bottle-fed buffalo raised entirely in captivity
have killed their owners; so have dairy cattle. Sometimes they
snort or bellow in warning, but don’t count on it.
I once saw a bull toss his head like a high school girl flipping
her hair. The bison next to him took a few steps and fell,
disemboweled by that casual motion. A bison bull may weigh a ton
— like a modest passenger car — but can spin and leap
like a ballet dancer. From a standing position, a bison, like a
deer, can jump a fence. They can run 35 miles an hour, faster than
most horses and all joggers. Unless you can jump 12 feet straight
up and come down doing a four-minute mile, stay well away.
After all, bison evolved with the saber-toothed tiger and
the dire wolf, both extinct. Their wild instincts are still strong,
and their weapons — horns and hooves — are sharp. On
the ranch where we hunted, a wounded bull and his herd mates had
destroyed two pickups in minutes.
Yellowstone rangers
once found a female grizzly dead in the middle of mauled grass and
patches of bison hair. Half the bloody bruin’s ribs were
broken, and its belly punctured by two holes: Killed by a young
buffalo, they concluded.
Cattle, the bison’s wild
cousins, aren’t docile either; they evolved under the same
challenging conditions as bison. Beef cattle are not domesticated.
Most never see a barn, are never restrained by humans, and rarely
enter corrals. They birth without human contact, and raise their
young while roaming the grasslands, wild as antelope. Twice a year,
they may be corralled when calves are branded and weaned, but those
experiences don’t make them like people.
Like
bison, cattle came with built-in weapons, horns and hooves, and
regularly used them against predators and people. To reduce the
danger, ranchers began dehorning, or raising polled (hornless)
animals.
Both bison and cattle are usually calm because
they have little to fear except from their human handlers, who have
brains enough to leave them alone. Now that public opinion has
repopulated the West with serious predators — grizzlies,
wolves and cougars — maybe the ruminants will get back in
touch with their wilder side. Bison may learn to distrust guys with
rifles, and charge even sooner.
Cattle are always wary of
strangers. Folks on foot, whether on public or private land, should
keep a safe distance from any bovine. Maybe ranchers should bring
back horned cattle. Not only could they defend themselves against
natural predators, they might discourage trespassing humans as
well.
Linda M. Hasselstrom is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). Armed as well as liberated, she keeps the
powder for her muzzle-loading rifle in the horn from a female
bison. She writes from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and runs cattle on a
ranch next to bison herds in South
Dakota.
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