Or is it Bison?
I first became infatuated with the American Buffalo, or more correctly “Bison”, when I was a child and first visited the Woolaroc Wildlife Preserve near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Some of the first photographs I ever made were of that remarkable herd of amazing animals. We now have several carvings and sculptures of buffalo in our home. I just enjoy looking at them and thinking about the impact of North America’s largest mammal on our nation’s history.
I really enjoyed the Ken Burns documentary “The American Buffalo” on PBS and have seen it several times. I highly recommend watching it to begin to understand what happened, both the tragedy and the survival story it tells.
Before 1870 gigantic herds of millions of buffalo roamed the Great Plains and were a primary source of food, clothing, shelter, and tools for the Plains Indians that lived and thrived here for thousands of years. In a very short period of ten years, the buffalo were hunted to near extinction by white hunters so that by 1880 there were fewer than a hundred left. Buffalo are now making a comeback through the efforts of wildlife preserves, national parks, and a few important private herds.
In July we visited both the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Both parks have substantial herds and are doing a great job of maintaining and increasing the buffalo herds under their care. We got caught in a few “Buffalo Jams.” This is when traffic is backed up because of buffaloes standing in the middle or moving slowly across the road. The last time we were in a buffalo jam in Yellowstone was about 25 years ago and we were on snowmobiles. It was in sub-zero temps in January, and as it was this summer, the buffaloes absolutely have the right of way.
The biggest thrill was more recently when we visited the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge near Canton, Kansas. Canton is in the Flint Hills near McPherson, south of Salina. There we took a tour in a tram right through the middle of a large herd out on the prairie. The guide had all sorts of information about the habits and history of the buffalo.
We learned that the dominant leader of the herd is always a female. Not a queen as much as matriarch. She decides when to move and where the best grass is. The females are very protective of their calves and only have one per year. Twins are very rare. It is important not to get between a female buffalo and her calf. The males or bulls, tend to be loners, are not social and generally stay away from the rest of the herd which is mainly females and their calves. If you see a buffalo out by itself, it is invariably a bull.
The song, “Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play,” was written in and about Kansas in the 1870’s and is now the official state song. If someone wants to see a large herd of buffalo in their original natural habitat, it is only a 165-mile drive southwest of Kansas City. The Maxwell Wildlife Refuge is owned and operated by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and offers year-round tours; Maxwell Wildlife Refuge is an amazing resource for Kansas.
