Yellowstone’s high plateaus are on average well over 5,000 feet in elevation; during the harsh winter months it can hardly be considered prime habitat for the wild grazers. Much of the park actually sits within the caldera of one the world’s largest active volcanoes.
Though Yellowstone is synonymous with the shaggy bovines, bison would prefer to spend their winters further downriver, outside the park, on lands now usurped and fenced-in by cowboys to fatten-up their cattle before shipping them off to slaughter.
The following excerpt from my book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport, ties in with the report by Stephany of Buffalo Field Campaign, below the photo…
Selfless and protective, bison develop lasting bonds in and outside the family, not only between cows, calves and siblings but also between unrelated individuals who grew up, traveled and learned about life together. Juveniles help mothers look after the youngsters and will gladly lend a horn to keep potential predators away from the calves. I have witnessed cooperation among bison families often in the years I’ve spent observing and photographing them. I’ve also seen them put themselves in harm’s way to defend elk from hungry wolves, and even mourn over the bones of their dead.
Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson
Report from Buffalo Field Campaign:
Between Thursday and Sunday, forty-four of America’s last wild buffalo were killed in the Gardiner Basin by hunters with the Nez Perce and Umatilla tribes. Most of these buffalo were shot less than 300 yards from the north boundary of Yellowstone National Park, on a small area of Gallatin National Forest land called Beattie Gulch.
Three of the buffalo that were shot here did not immediately fall but walked into Yellowstone, where they were not allowed to be retrieved by the Nez Perce hunters who shot them; their bodies left to the ecosystem. According to state and tribal officials, the hunters who shot these buffalo are being allowed to keep their tags to kill other buffalo. In another incident, three other buffalo were illegally shot and killed by two non-tribal members.
Two days later we watched as more than a hundred buffalo
approached these killing fields. They found the remains of their relatives strewn across the land like fleshy boulders left behind by glaciers. We watched in sorrowful awe as the buffalo approached the gut piles. Their tails shot up in the air as they ran from remain to remain, discovering what was left. Enormous bulls bellowed like roaring dragons, mouths agape, bodies arched, and pawing the ground. The buffalo placed their faces close to the flesh left behind, nuzzling their muzzles into the earth where the buffalo had fallen.
They sniffed at fetuses still sheltered in their mother’s flesh whose lives were ended before they were born. The buffalo circled and scattered, ran to each other and away again.
Sparring, bumping, running, pawing and crying out in their deep emotion of their discovery.
Watching, we could only think of it as a wake, a mighty wailing of the buffalo. Back and forth they ran, frantic, between the gut piles that had been their friends, their family. Like chieftains in their own right, fathers of their clans, the mature bulls lingered the longest, as the mothers and grandmothers lead the young ones on in an ancient procession, their deliberate footsteps slower in their sorrow.
The depth of relationship the buffalo share is timeless,
intense, and far beyond most people’s willingness or ability to accept or understand. Indeed, it is easier, more convenient, to ignore or pretend that it doesn’t mean anything. In that blindness we deny not only to other creatures, but to ourselves, the honest power of love,
the gift of respect, and the aid of wisdom. The buffalo already encompass these things, and they are patiently waiting on the brink for us to catch up…
Exposing the Big Game 
I mourn with them.
Me too.
tragic – we are a despicable species
And this is supposed to be the 21st century. So much for human evolution! The disturbed bloodthirsty psycho’s still get plenty of opportunity to abuse wildlife.
I read this from Buffalo Field Campaign while @ work today & could not hold back the tears & still cannot. My heart breaks for them & with them.
I was always on edge with the thought of Native Americans having a “harmonious relationship with nature”, but I realized however, carnivorism and harmony have about as much in common as Michael Vick and companion animal care.
“Furthermore, horrifying stories of Lame Deer or Chief Seattle praying over murdered animals display a primitive understanding of compassion and decency. Praying over a murdered animal does not exonerate the killer from the crime. Many Natives (and others) refuse to accept this fact because they, too, eat meat. They would rather blindly defend their people instead of acknowledging the occasional wrongful acts of their ancestors. There is no honor in defending cruelty.” -Gary Yourofsky
You, Gary and I are all in agreement on this.
Reblogged this on bearspawprint.
Great observations. Thank you for sharing.
I suppose I’m still at a loss to understand the preferential treatment towards the tribes. Like the rest of us, meat is available for purchase at the local grocery store, so the bison hunt isn’t necessary to feed tribal members.
Then again, we allow tribes preferential treatment to set up casinos because, somehow, somewhere, their ancestors had playing cards and slot machines, and by golly we need to let them have them again.
This story just makes me so sad!
Me too
Surely we can find a place for the bison to roam, outside Yellowstone and elsewhere without hunting, like shooting a cow in a field, call it harvesting at least, no just call it killing, not hunting. This is one of the last best places, right? Tourists don’t come here to see cattle and fences. Both people living in Montana and visitors think of it as somewhat wild. A real heritage would be to preserve and restore the wildness of Montana. How much bad PR can Montana create for itself with regard to bison and wolves and other wild critters? Montana is giving itself terrible PR with regard to bison, wolves, wild horses, and soon maybe grizzlies. Why cannot bison wonder outside the Park to traditional winter grazing grounds? Manage the ranchers I say. Why cannot we find other public land? Ranchers and farmers are granted 772 permits on national forest lands in Montana, 3776 permits on BLM land in Montana, 26,000 permits in 16 western states. Who is encroaching? Man on wildlife? Let’s start retiring some of those permits or all them. Why are we so ruled by the oppositional opinions of ranchers and farmers and hunters (“sportsmen”} and misinformed yokels and rancher politicians and rancher legislators? You cannot confuse them with the facts. Per Lewis Carroll, “I have said it thrice, what I say three times is true.” It has been suggested and even planned that bison be designated for placement (by FWP Montana) in other parts of the state. They are brucellosis free, tested, repeatedly so. Yet public meetings about the issue were attended almost unanimously by rancher-farmer crowds yelling, “No way!” Bison wander out of Yellowstone into traditional winter grazing ground, and ranchers protest and stockmen corral them, haze them and slaughter them. Instead of managing the cattle and ranchers around Yellowstone, ranchers want to manage the bison and keep them from going into a traditional outlet for grazing near Gardiner. The reports on any brucellosis of the past 50 years passing from bison or elk to cattle are anecdotal, unproven, and none documented, only once in a Texas A&M lab setting closely confined with cattle. Brucellosis is more likely by elk who are more numerous and routinely come and go by the thousands, but even that does not seem to be the case, butt then elk are protected by sportsmen and FWP, farmed really, and ranchers probably do not want to step on that sacred set (sportsmen) of toes. Montana FWP, US Dept. of Agriculture Wildlife Services, and USFWS are agencies that serve ranchers, farmers and sportsmen more than wildlife.
Besides, any elk or bison who might carry brucellosis caught it from cattle who first brought it into the area. It’s like blaming the natives for the smallpox we introduced to the continent.
Reblogged this on Exposing the Big Game.
..
dear gawd how my heart bleeds …
i see humans..
but no humanity..
The bison are as much victims of ranchers and hunters as wolves. I have been a member and supporter of buffalo field campaign and have been following the same murders of the bison occurring year after year. Some of the saddest sights I have even seen are photos of the bison, bloodied and battered after roundup, some with restraining rings in their noses, waiting to be loaded on transport trucks to their death. Then the pictures of the trucks with their once wild and free victims headed for the highway and the slaughterhouse. If the human species had any sense of justice, we would not be able to live with ourselves and our destruction of other lives.
And in this heartlessness, I believe, is reflected our doom. In our collective refusal to acknowledge the suffering of these beings, and many other beings, we fuel the indifference and tragedy that will eventually circle back and arrive at our doorstep. This trait has no single home in any particular tribe or race or gender. It is unfortunately a widespread human flaw.
Such a beautifully written tragic piece…..there truly is no hope for other species until the ultimate predator, man, exits the planet. Depending on what series of catastrophic events precipitates this, there should still be enough other species to evolve further…..still thinking about the 10 year time frame Guy McPherson gives humanity.
This is so disturbing and terribly heartbreaking .. so tired of humans false needing of meat and killing others for it .. who says this is ok now .. let the Buffalo live in peace and as families that they deserve just like us
Being a speciesist kills and hurts us all
These policies are deadly !
Reblogged this on uddeer and commented:
An amazing account of how buffalo react when recognizing the remains of their family killed by humans. For the Church to say God gave humans a soul but not to animals is misguided vanity.