akbeemer
SURVIVOR
This morning Annie and I were having our morning coffee. It was still dark when one of our cats, Merlin, began howling as he sat on a window sill. He does this when one of the local barn cats wanders through our place, so we shooed him away for the window. An hour or so later, once it was light, Annie looked out the window to see 80 or so buffalo on the slope east of our house and about 50 feet away. Our neighbor rancher has a herd of buffalo in addition to his cattle herd, so we knew where they came from. Annie walked out on our back deck and the buffalo got spooked and before we knew it we had a scene worthy of a John Ford western on our hands. The herd stampeded down the hill, through the middle pasture, across Silver Creek and to south end of the lower pasture adjacent to the quasi-abandoned railroad track. There, most of the herd stopped but a half dozen or so got on the rail bed and headed west, away from where they needed to be. That group soon turned around and rejoined the herd. I called the rancher, Billy. His family has continuously ranched on his land since 1863; he is a very pleasant fellow. Billy was 100 miles away, ironically he was helping a friend on a fence project. There was no one on the ranch that could help us, so I called a neighbor and the three of us decided to herd the buffalo home. Now, I know someone out there is thinking, "Why didn't he fill his freezer with buffalo meat?" Beside the fact that Billy is a friend, in Montana it is a landowner's responsibility to fence animals out of his property, so shoot it and you bought it, but you do not get to keep the meat. Buffalo, even those from domestic herds, are aggressive and skittish and will charge you in numbers; therefore plan A was to observe and do nothing so long as the buffalo were not moving away from where we wanted them to go. On the south side of our property there is an old rail line. It has not been used in 30 years or so except for the occasional storage of rail cars. The land on the other side of the rail line is Billy's; the ranch is both east and south of us. After a bit we three began slowly walking towards the herd remaining about 150 yards away. Our movement started the herd to move slowly across the rail line and thru two large holes in the barbed wire fence on Billy's land. Not sure how or when the holes got there. Took about 20 minutes for the herd to completely cross and climb the ridge onto Billy's land. One group of six doubled back at one point and were troting towards us. I picked up a branch incase I needed to wack my neighbor in the knee (he is young and could out run me), but the breakaway group turned back and joined the herd. And that is how our day started.
Took these after the initial stampede and from a safe distance:
Took these after the initial stampede and from a safe distance:
