If every meat-eating American hunted a single bison over the course of his or her lifetime, the Great Plains could be restored to pristine wilderness in less than a century, and the bison herd restored to its original population of 40 million animals.

Sadly, not a hope in hell of that fantasy working out without epic human disaster. The issues of too many people and relatively small private land holdings have to be overcome. Our population simply needs industrial agriculture to sustain it and that is not compatible with roaming bison herds. Then, how do you get big enough blocks of land without massive expropriation? The realistic options for large wild bison populations appear to me to be limited to totalitarian governments and/or catastrophic human population decline. For example, the huge bison populations of late C18-early C19 were a result of the collapse of the native population that resulted from the introduction of European diseases. The huge wildlife populations in the medieval times and under the old communist regimes are other bad examples of how similar things have been done in the past.


Here is a bit of speculation. We own a half section with ~300 acres of native grass and trees. The locals figure we could run 30 head of cattle year round with no supplemental feeding. Call it 10 acres/cow or bison. Now say there are 3 million people in Alberta or ~500,000 households, each of which would get a bison once every 5 years. That would be 100,000 bison per year. Assuming a 10% off take, we'd need a population of ~1 million bison. At 10 acres/bison that is 10 million acres. Now things get interesting.

Unimproved, dry grazing land with soil too poor for farming goes for at least $1,000/acre in central Alberta and usually a lot more. Add some water and agricultural or recreational value and the price doubles or triples. Irrigated land is 6-8x more. Then there is the cost of houses, barns etc. Lets say a miracle occurs and you can get big blocks of land for an average of $2,000/acre. That is $20,000,000,000 or $6,500,000,000 per million people. Not nearly as bad as I thought actually, but there are about 330 million people in North America. If 10% of the people were to get a significant fraction of their protein from bison, then in this fantasy, you'd need $214,500,000,000 for land and 33 million bison. Presumably, the cost of human and economic dislocation would be much larger.

The best I hope for is healthy conservation herds and farmed herds that aren't too badly diseased and genetically manipulated.

I'd love to be wrong.

Dean

Thanks, Dean. Well-considered observations are all-too-rare at AR.

I agree that the economics are problematic - but in my mind it's really a PR thing ... the public's perception of hunting.

Twenty years ago, one never heard about hunting in urban America. Now it's becoming (to a limited extent, of course) a "cool" thing to do. ... And more hunters means more bison ranchers, more bison, more land and so on.

I mention South Africa in the talk because in a decade or two, 17% of that country was converted to game-ranches once the law allowed land owners to profit from it. That's an area equivalent to the entire US National Parks System and more than five times SANParks (South Africa's National Parks System).

The way I see it, every section that's converted to game ranching instead of center-pivot irrigation is a step in the right direction.

I'm a fan of the North American conservation model. It plain works and a big part of it is the public ownership of wildlife. I just can't imagine a good scenario that allows that to continue and there to be widespread wild bison.

The thing about public wildlife ownership is that a wide spectrum of the population has a stake in there being lots of huntable wildlife. Look at all the private conservation organisations in NA. DU, B&C, Pheasants Forever and a laundry list of others for about every critter you can hunt. Look at the whitetail industry and hunting megastore franchises. They only exist because everybody owns the wildlife and anybody can hunt. Ever see a Bass Pro Shop in Europe? Me either and political correctness is not why there aren't any.

Once the wildlife is privately owned, you are on a slippery slope. I know it can work. Europe, RSA and Namibia are fine examples. But there are issues. Put and Take Shooting (see any RSA lion thread on AR), genetic manipulation ( golden wildebeest), disease (CWD in Alberta and Saskatchewan). Fine, stuff happens, and the private wildlife owner needs to make a living. That generally means looking for money from people who have a lot of it.

We can pay to play, but most people can't, including most of the whitetail/pig hunters out there. They simply don't have material amounts of disposable income. They are out of the game and their support for hunting is gone, especially when something unfortunate happens. The current hipster trend towards hunting is real (a suburban housewife at our daughters' school asked my wife for some venison last week.), but it only exists because anyone can theoretically do it.

On both sides of the border, we are philosophically opposed to entrenched elites. Put access to hunting in the hands of the elites alone as it is in much of Europe and Africa and hunting is done in NA.

In the end, I want more than game farmed bison on pseudo-prairies. I just can't see a realistic, acceptable way of making it work.

Dean

I think if there ever was a North American model it got crushed by the expansion of the west and privitzation of hunting on a coast to coast Brownsville to Hall Beach change of attitudes toward hunting.

We have the problem of special interest groups, we have the perceived threat of elitism and of course we have the problem that millions of people are trying to utilize the resource.

Some jurisdictions (states, provinces and territories) have a populous so huge that there is no way that those resident hunts can have the days afield they require.

Some jurisdictions are so sparsely populated that only native tribes and a small local population utilizes the hunting there.

I am not going to argue the spread of disease. Deer and antelope are very suceptable to disease, and even though it is believed that the prions from CWD have been on the North American continent for thousands of years. The localization of large numbers of these animals under a farmed type concentration has lead to an increase in the diseases being spread. Where CWD came from can be argued, but farmed deer don't help it. It is not however deer farming that is the problem, the problem is people moving deer.

When you look at states that have managed for trophy quality and have very little in the way of opportunity versus states that have an inverse plan you see cutthroat hunting practices. Utah and Arizona hunters have dealt with high quality and super low tag allocations. This causes a regional demand that pushes across state lines, and tag rich areas like Wyoming, Montana and Colorado now have to contend with increased numbers of applicants for their own hunting. Of course these states are traditionally sought out by hunters from the Eastern states for elk and pronghorn, but now the local across the border state hunters are increasingly pushing to hunt these areas too.

The points systems were a great way to insure an increased method of funding for the wildlife agencies with the hope that the points would eventually lead to a tag. I am still playing the tag lotteries in hopes that I can eventually hunt something someplace.

Pigs on the other hand have been a blessing for hunters, providing more opportunity where the increase in hunters has made non-resident tags a harder draw. In California pig hunting is still a pretty expensive proposition, but this goes with our completely limited big game hunting resource and our huge population.

Sounds a bit like Agenda 21

The only 100% free range totally wild plains bison herd in their historic range in Canada walks across my farm whenever they feel like it. For all the good it does me they might as well be on Mars.

quote:

Originally posted by Dogleg:
The only 100% free range totally wild plains bison herd in their historic range in Canada walks across my farm whenever they feel like it.

I was under the impression there are several herds like this in Canada. Yukon, NWT, Alberta, etc.

Those are Wood-land bison. There's a few hairs to split; Plains bison, historic range and Canadian. Here's a bit about the Sturgeon River herd if you're interested

http://www.bisonstewards.ca/

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/...atcul/natcul4/a.aspx

You are right about the Yukon herd and NWT herds being Wood Bison...should have clarified that. The Alberta herd at least in and around WBNP are hybrids as far as I know. However, there is a herd of plains bison free roaming in BC. It's the Pink Mountain herd.

Cool info about the Sturgeon River herd. Never knew that one existed.

Thing is, Pink Mountain isn't in the historic range of plains bison, that was the range of woodland bison. Those bison all came from one farmer's escapees. Which goes back to the three part problem. The Pink Mountain is free-range and plains but not historic. The Elk Island herd is historic and plains but not free-range. The Cold lake herd is wild, plains but not historic. Which leaves the Sturgeon River herd which is all three, leaving it as unique as far as Canada goes. Don't get me wrong I wish there were more.

As an aside, I used to drill a few wells around Pink Mountain and drove through the area on my way to Fort Nelson on numerous occasions.

Ran into these guys today.

Bison sure is great table fare, even if only in burgers

Good roasts too, if not over cooked. Double wrapping in tin-foil with a can of mushroom soup, a couple strips of bacon, onion and a meat thermometer will moist cook it to tenderness.

The same technique would probably work on an anvil though.

Yes, to me eating bison is like eating german chocolate cake-it's very rich and you can only eat so much in a sitting. I shot a bison years ago with my .54 caliber hawken, and we had bison meat for a year. Loved it!

Steve, I just stumbled upon this thread. Thank you for putting up that Youtube. The comparatives between the beef and bison models are amazing. My eyes were opened to the value of bison as critical players in the Plains ecosystem by Dan O'Brien's book, "Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch."

There is a free range herd of Bison in Utah. I hunted them in 2008. It was one of the best hunts that I have ever been on. It is 100 percent free range and can be very tough. I got my bison on the 6th day. I should have had it on the 2nd day but I had a major gun failure.

Utah has relocated more Bison over to the Book Cliffs. I have not seen them yet but they are there.

Bison will never be restored as they once were.

Congratulations Jason.
The bison is my spirit guide.
Perhaps some day one will offer himself to me. If it happens, I pray I understand, and give the bison all the respect required.
Funny how we can be about such things.

Ive shot several Bison in Ut. Wyom, Idaho, and Neb. all fair chase, some more or less fair, as I booked Bison Hunts over the years..As to the meat its good for a month or two with me then it gets too sweet??for my tastd, Cape buffalo is much better but tends to be tough in that we only shoot big trophy bulls..
I prefer elk and Hill country white tail over all game meat.in No. America, and Eland in Africa

The buffalo situation is what it is and thats not going to change based on the very nature of the beast, so the thread is basically without substance other than the unusual and interesting facts or fiction, I enjoyed the read though pointless..

BTW, Texas fish and wild life has a large herd of wild bison from the original herd of the Plains Indians, and they are protecting that herd and doing DNA on the animals as they produce...Its available in the Texas panhandle for all to drive thru and look at that old herd...It was saved by the wife of one of those large ranches during the buffalo slaughter on the ranch that set aside a large number of those buffalo and no one was allowed to shoot them for many years...Quite a history around that herd, and its available to all..

quote:

Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
Congratulations Jason.
The bison is my spirit guide.
Perhaps some day one will offer himself to me. If it happens, I pray I understand, and give the bison all the respect required.
Funny how we can be about such things.

Spirit guide??? Really?

Goodness...

Ross, have you ever hunted a bison?

I will be hunting bison in Montana next year.

First time.

As an American hunter, I simply need to do it.

I am grateful that I can, and that all of us can, owing to splendid individual and collective efforts at conservation over many decades.

My rifle will be a Sharps in caliber .45-70 with iron sights, of course.

If I am successful, I will make use of the entire animal, including hide, meat, horns and bones.

Just as did the plains Indians, for millennia before we whites changed their world forever.

The American bull bison is an iconic animal.

I hope to hunt and kill him, and do him a humble justice as best I can.

quote:

If I am successful, I will make use of the entire animal, including hide, meat, horns and bones.

Good for you my friend! I had a shoulder mount of done of mine. It hangs in our large master bedroom, along with my 6X8 bull elk, two whitetail, a desert mule deer, two antelope and three coues deer. Then with other parts of the buffalo I did the following, since I occasionally enjoy mountain man reenactments and attending mountain man rendezvous: I had the penis stretched out and made into a cane with an old yellowed antique pool cue ball secured at the top with a copper buffalo head fixated on the top of the cue ball. The remaining hide was tanned hair on, and I use it with my mountain man Rendezvous items. I used to also regularly use it with some Boy Scouting ceremonies. I had the scrotum tanned with the hair on, and then made it into a mountain man neck bag that contains some small buffalo and mountain man tokens. I had the teeth preserved and made into a very nice mountain man necklace with small silver full buffalo tokens and trade beads. So, yes, there are some fun and interesting things that you can do, or make with the various parts of the buffalo. Enjoy your hunt and don't forget to post pics!

Great stuff, UEG. I will learn and act based on your example.

The best free roaming buffalo hunt today is in New Mexico, and they have yak hunts also, I like the horseback hunt they offer..Go on Bison hunts New Mexico and find it..If you can't find the web page email me, but its easy to find..I booked for the So. Dakota herd that was use in "Dances with wolves", and several others, but they sold out and Im not sure what they did with those large herds..

But Bison at best are not the smartest animal to hunt..I had leather and rugs made and my grandson had a neat pair of old fashion hair shotgun chaps made out of his. My hair on rug makes for a warm wrap at a Idaho winter foot ball game or rodeo...

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
Ross, have you ever hunted a bison?

I will be hunting bison in Montana next year.

First time.

As an American hunter, I simply need to do it.

I am grateful that I can, and that all of us can, owing to splendid individual and collective efforts at conservation over many decades.

My rifle will be a Sharps in caliber .45-70 with iron sights, of course.

If I am successful, I will make use of the entire animal, including hide, meat, horns and bones.

Just as did the plains Indians, for millennia before we whites changed their world forever.

The American bull bison is an iconic animal.

I hope to hunt and kill him, and do him a humble justice as best I can.

Mike,
I have not hunted them to kill. I have stalked them and spied on them on various ranches in NM. I have been very close to them in Yellowstone Park. I would like to hunt one with a Sharps and actually stalk them.

They are easy to get up on. They are not easy to kill. Need to place the bullet very well.

I would use the meat, hide and skull.

Sounds like great fun. However, it can deteriorate into a drive by killing. So, have fun. Do it right.

Coming up in August, on the Flying D ranch.

I will do my best, as I always do.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

Good Luck! Anticipation is a large part of every hunt!

Mike, congratulations. The Flying D is one of Turner's most spectacular ranches.