Montana Recommends Limited Bison Hunting
By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press Writer

BILLINGS, Mont. - State wildlife officials are recommending allowing a limited hunt of bison that leave Yellowstone National Park in search of winter forage. Ranchers and livestock industry officials worry that wandering bison could transmit disease to cattle.

Allowing hunters to shoot up to 25 bison each winter was the preferred alternative in an environmental assessment released Monday by Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The hunting season would run from Nov. 15 to Feb. 15 in areas where bison from Yellowstone are now captured or killed by government officials or coaxed back into the park to keep them from roaming, said Kurt Alt, a regional wildlife manager with the agency.

The state assessment gave four alternatives, ranging from no change from current practices to a more liberal hunt in which up to 225 bison could be killed. A final decision could come this summer, Alt said, with a hunt possible at the end of this year. Alt said any hunt would be in addition to an existing state-federal management plan.

Under that joint bison management plan, bison that cannot be coaxed back into the park are captured and tested for brucellosis, which causes cows to abort their pregnancies and can cause an untreatable flu-like illness in humans.

Animals testing positive are sent to slaughter. If the park's population exceeds 3,000 animals by late winter and early spring each year, bison that stray into Montana can be killed without being tested first. There are now more than 4,200 bison in the park, which park officials say is the highest in nearly a decade.

Bison from the park have been hunted before in Montana; during the winter of 1988-89, hunters killed 569 bison on the park's northern boundary. But the hunt was ended by the Legislature after a storm of protests about shooting Yellowstone wildlife.

The hunt was criticized as less than sporting. Game wardens led each hunter directly to the animal to be killed. The hunters shot at close range at animals that often were standing still, grazing. Last year, the state Legislature passed a measure giving wildlife officials the authority to establish a bison hunt. The environmental assessment is one piece in determining whether a hunt is feasible and desirable.

I saw that in the paper this morning. My recommendation for appeasing the enviros concern about shooting standing/grazing cattle is to have them (the enviros) act like coolies in old British In'ja! We'll pay them a nickle a day, teach them how to speak and yell with Indian accents (like Babu in the Simpsons), dress them in some ivory colored smock with a smart looking red Shriner-type hat and fit them with flap sandels. A school bus would bring them to the other side of the pasture than they'll "drive" the the bison to the well healed Suburban-driving hunters and we'll shoot them as they run past us.

I hope this goes through, my application will be in! Its definitely not hunting, perse, but its a great chance to get a real, wild bison. I've done the Turner ranch buffalo shoot before, can't be much worse than that.