Tuesday, October 12, 2004

The cottonwood trees at the ranch headquarters are shedding their leaves in a tumble of green tinted gold. The breeze carries a new scent, a harbinger of winter's chilling winds. I've seen a lot of coyotes lately. Their coats are becoming plush and full with those silver-gray and yellowish to brown casts. They bark and sing quite a bit these nights and even sometimes these days. A couple of prairie falcons have begun once again to hang out along the driveway where they have been the last two winters. Winter is coming. I hope it brings snow to fill the stock dams with water, rain doesn't seem to do the job-so we want snow.

It was about this time a couple of years ago when Dan called me and asked me about coming back to South Dakota to do what I'm doing. Obviously I came, and a short two years later all of our job descriptions have changed. We have become a somewhat smoother running outfit than we were. The effects of that on the buffalo are obvious to me. The buffalo know us better and, therefore, are easier for us to be around. We have circulated them from pasture to pasture enough that they know what is happening about the time that we open one set of gates and close another. They almost anticipate us, which makes our job easier; but more importantly, it puts less stress on them. Without human intervention and without any other predator the buffalo have no reason to be stressed. We open the pastures as much as possible, largely to reduce and/or relieve the stress that confinement puts on them.

Yesterday I put one of the herds into a new pasture. The animals hesitated briefly at the new gate, and then a couple of cows and calves ventured across that line and headed at a trot for the Cheyenne River. The rest of the herd in their burnt-gold, tan and brown to black casts of color charged through that gate, rumbling, thundering toward the river, which perhaps none of them had ever seen. It was as if an explosion of genetic memory had burst into reality.

All of the animals, from the oldest, slowest cow, the biggest bull and the smallest calf started bucking and running about, butting heads and kicking just for the fun of it. They plowed into the water, took a long, cold drink of fresh running water, went to the crossing, up an old trail cut into the riverbank and streamed into a new pasture. They are now one stage closer to their newest, biggest ever winter pasture--the one we have spent ten months preparing. Five weeks from now will see them on the U.S. Forest Service managed grasslands. For this ranch Thanksgiving will have a new significance--buffalo on about twenty-two thousand acres (without internal or cross-fencing) of where they belong.