Buffalo Gals
Warning: Many visitors have been gored by buffalo. Buffalo can weigh 2,000 pounds and spring 30 miles per hour, three times faster than you can run. These animals may appear tame but are wild, unpredictable and dangerous. Do not approach buffalo. (Information sheet given to tourists at Yellowstone National Park.)
The buffalo usually come in at about 40 miles per hour. If the big one is alone, she will speed around the 150-foot-circle of the pen five or ten times before she starts to slow down. If all three come in at once, they stick close together, darting about, raising dust. And if the dog is in the pen when they enter, they chase him right out under the gate, attacking in strange bounds that add to their height and fearsome demeanor … comical fur balls jumping as if their legs were pogo sticks.
I feed the buffalo in a small pen, and until they get to know me, I’m careful not to crowd them into a corner. The fence is made of metal panels that they could bend, break, go over or through. To fool them, I’ve lined the panels with six-foot-high vertical slats from the lumber yard in Kamas. The bark is still on the wood, and the effect is very Montana. People who keep buffalo joke that you have to keep your gas tank full because buffalo don’t respect fences and when they go, they don’t stop.
Most summers, I keep three yearling heifers. Once I had four. At first, when I feed them, they view me suspiciously from the farthest corner. Only after I leave will they venture out to see what I left them. But by the time the aspen leaves turn yellow, I will be able to reach slowly through the panels across the little hay-filled feeder and scratch their cute little noses as they eat. For this to work, they must be really hungry. I must be alone and have many quiet minutes to devote to the project.
To understand why I might want to associate with buffalo, you must understand my passion for riding horses that go into a herd of cattle, separate one, and hold it in the center of the pen. It sounds simple, but given cows’ natural separation anxiety, and the athletic ability of horses, it can get fast and exciting. Through breeding and training, the horses will do this essentially on their own. Once the cow is separated, the rider puts the reins down, and the horse takes responsibility for holding the cow. We call them “cutting horses.”
Since the goal is a horse that can work cattle, cows are a necessity, and I keep some all summer. But eventually the cattle get sour, lose interest in the game, and must be replaced from time to time. Buffalo are fast and quick and stay that way. They keep a horse sharp. And they don’t get sour.
Our buffalo have their shots, ear tags, personalities and, after a few weeks, nicknames. And they develop patterns. “Freight Train” goes full blast around and around ‘til her tongue hangs out. Then she makes a left turn and stops. Then she’ll go again, make a left turn and stop. Over and over. “Jones” will work left and right, the turns about 30 feet apart.
I’m a little selfish about letting buddies cut my cattle because they get used up so quickly. But I welcome other cutters to work with my buffalo. They become the focus of pleasant socializing. About three summers ago, while sitting horseback, talking and watching the shaggy brown creatures, someone told us of a neighbor who also had buffalo. His were big ones from North Dakota, and he advertised buffalo hunts on the Internet. For something like two or three thousand dollars, a client could have the Western adventure of going to this guy’s barn in Peoa and shooting from the hay loft into the pen below. After a successful “hunt,” the backhoe comes in to collect the trophy. We all were pretty amazed and disgusted by the story. It may say more about the quality and sportsmanship of some of today’s trophy hunters than it does about the creativity needed to survive on a small family farm nowadays.
A few days ago, Wes, a friend from Oakley working his stud on my buffalo, told me the latest adventure at the Peoa buffalo hunt. Apparently some guy off the Web came with his gun and camouflage outfit, but when he learned he was going to shoot buffalo out of a hay loft, he said, “No way, man.” He made them haul the buffalo up onto the bench between Oakley and Peoa. Shots were fired, and the frightened creature ran through many fences, dragging yards of barbed wire across State Road 32 before they cornered it at Crandall’s Crushing and killed it.
So close, yet so far. Only a couple more worn and rusted wire fences and that buffalo would have been free in the Kamas Valley’s vast northern hills.
In Yellowstone National Park, great herds of buffalo graze and stroll. Beasts near the highway cause large tourist traffic jams. Before the frenzy of cameras, the herds stroll as peacefully as cattle, as magnificent as the Lincoln Memorial. My buffalo look awfully scroungy by comparison. They generally have a few patches of last winter’s wool coat clinging to their shoulders, and with that scruffy beard and those horns, it’s hard to think of them as girls. But buffalo gals they are, and as their personalities emerge, well, I grow fond of them.
Then fall comes and snow is around the corner. By then the biggest one (or two) is starting to lower her head and paw the ground as my horse approaches. I know her time as a cutting partner is coming to an end. At 650 or 700 pounds, the gals begin to lose interest in our little game.
I don’t know what happens to my buffalo when they become trophy size. I hope and believe that they are replacement heifers — future mothers — in a herd at someone’s buffalo ranch. If I leased them, they go back to their real home. If I bought them, I sell them to a family in West Jordan that raises elk and buffalo.
I expect to meet our cows again some day in a restaurant, but for the buffalo, I wish them a long, happy life … blue skies and deep grass.
When Don Weller isn't in his element cutting cattle, or buffalo, he works his magic as one of Park City Magazine's art directors.
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