Where The Buffalo Roam, It’s Roundup Time

The first Monday of every October is a big day in Moiese, Mont., a dot on the map between Missoula and Kalispell.

As many as 5,000 people come to watch whooping cowboys on horseback round up 350 ill-tempered buffalo for vaccinations and branding. Some animals are sold, while the rest are returned to the National Bison Range.

True buffalo, of course, are the Cape buffalo of Africa or the water buffalo of Asia. But the American bison has been called “buffalo” for so long that we now use the names “buffalo” and “bison” interchangeably.

The history of the bison in Flathead County north of Missoula began around 1873 when Walking Coyote, a Pend Oreille Indian, returned home with five orphaned calves. By that time, the huge herds of North American bison that once had numbered 30 to 70 million animals had been wastefully slaughtered, and fewer than 100 remained in the wild.

Walking Coyote’s private herd grew and changed hands several times. Eventually, this large herd of free-roaming bison became an irritant to cattle ranchers, so the owner tried to sell the herd to the U.S. government. When Uncle Sam refused, the bison were bought by Canada.

The loss of this last large U.S. herd produced a public outcry, which led to the formation of the American Bison Society. Public lands were set aside for the preservation of the American bison in 1908, and today 350 to 500 bison roam the 18,500 protected acres near Moiese.

Bison reproduce easily in their safe environment, but grazing land is limited - hence, the necessity for culling.

Last year’s roundup began before dawn as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees found their stations on the maze of metal catwalks overlooking holding pens, squeeze chutes and scales. Each man or woman had a specific task, whether it was slapping a stickybacked cardboard number on each animal, vaccinating and drawing blood or moving animals from pen to pen.

Long “shaker poles” with rusty tin cans tied loosely to the ends were used to startle the bison and urge them along. Electric prods were additional incentives for more stubborn animals.

The weight, sex, year of birth and destiny of each bison were recorded. Calves are branded with the last digit of the year they are born. Those born in the 1980s were branded on the right flank, while this decade’s calves have left-flank brands. Older animals are sold to animal parks, breeders or meatpackers.

The first drama of the day occurred as the initial group of bison was cut from the herd. With everyone at his assigned catwalk station, four horsemen rode up a canyon where the bison were grazing. In a dramatic swoop, the cowboys cut about 20 animals from the herd and hustled them toward the first holding corral.

The cowboys yelled as the bison raced into the narrowing passageway of fence leading to the corral. Suddenly, there were only three cowboys on three horses, and a riderless horse was galloping in the wrong direction.

Disoriented bison ran past the fallen cowboy, threatening to trample him. But he quickly jumped to his feet and was pulled aboard another cowboy’s horse, avoiding injury.

For most of the day, I stood on the catwalk only four or five feet from the animals below me. My heartbeat quickened each time a surprised bison raged at the sting of a needle or rammed into a barricade with escape in mind. And I cheered each time an animal was shunted back to the free range rather than to a sale pen.

First-time visitors shouldn’t miss the information center at the entrance to the bison range. Hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. There they’ll learn about the bison, as well as to the many other animals that make their home in the protected area.

Both mule deer and white-tailed deer share the grassy hillsides with elk and pronghorn. High rocky outcroppings are safe havens for bighorn sheep and mountain goats, while black bears, cougars, coyotes and bobcats inhabit the forested mountain regions.

Rabbits, ground squirrels, snakes, mink and muskrats are also found in the area.