6ft tall, 10ft long and weighing a ton…

[Foxyboy43]

Brilliant series on BBC - the story of man living in harmony with these leviathans, then massacring them and finally saving them.

The Great American Buffalo - Series 1: Episode 1

Ken Burns recounts the collision between two opposing views of the natural world.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Dunwaters]

You don’t live in harmony with bison, they’re narky, agile and actively maintain their own personal space.
I used to give a hand to look after some locally, I stopped when it got obvious that they only had to get lucky once and they weren’t going to stop trying.

 

[Dickie]

Great book by Steve Renella him of meat eater about them and their history.

 

[alberta boy]

You don’t live in harmony with bison, they’re narky, agile and actively maintain their own personal space.
I used to give a hand to look after some locally, I stopped when it got obvious that they only had to get lucky once and they weren’t going to stop trying.

I know three different ranchers who raise Bison , all have been severely injured at one time or another . One was hospitalized for about six weeks by a cow . You can never get complacent around them , they'll have a go at you if they get the opportunity . I generally steer clear of them for the most part , dangerous SOBs .

AB

 

[DVS1]

Made me chuckle having ass handed to itself Granted not the same species but shows what power they have

 

[MarinePMI]

I know three different ranchers who raise Bison , all have been severely injured at one time or another . One was hospitalized for about six weeks by a cow . You can never get complacent around them , they'll have a go at you if they get the opportunity . I generally steer clear of them for the most part , dangerous SOBs .

AB

Yep. I've walked up on one by accident one day, while out hunting (the large military base here, actually has the largest herd in the Southwest). He was taking a dust bath, and as I came around the corner of the trail, he hopped back up, faced me, snorted and started pawing the ground. Needless to say, I slowly backed up around the corner of the trail, and once out of view, put as much distance between him and I, as quickly as possible. I'm fairly certain he was a solitary male, that had been pushed out of the larger herd.

They are certainly not an animal to be trifled with....despite them constantly walking into the sniper range all the time.

 

[Yorkie]

Frank Mayer was a Buffalo hunter. I remember reading a book about him but can't remember what it was called. I did find something that may be of interest to those like minded.

The Buffalo Harvest | The West: A Film by Steven Ives | Ken Burns | PBS

Learn about the crew involved in the making of The West.

www.pbs.org

Definitely on my bucket list. Must be hunted with a falling block, black powder cartridge rifle though.

 

[Cootmeurer]

Harmony? What a strange word.
Until horses were brought to the American continent the primary way of living in harmony was to run excess numbers off a cliff and utilized the top corpses that could be reached. Lots of archaeological evidence of these “buffalo jumps”.

As to modern times, even trying to crossbreed them with cattle (beefalo) results in losing the docile part of cattle and gaining the aggressive behavior of the bison. Better to think of them like camels - useful but never turn your back on one and always expect the worst.

 

[MarinePMI]

Harmony? What a strange word.

Indeed. Especially when people use it to describe nature. There's no "harmony" in nature, just the self balancing acts of one animal eating/killing the smaller animals, and disease and age culling the higher, apex predators. There's nothing "harmonious" about it. Just violence and survival.

 

[Mr. Gain]

I got a bit fed up with the documentary because they kept asking people about bison/buffalo whose only qualification as interviewees was that they were First Peoples. They clearly had a genuine emotional connection, but pretty much everything they were saying seemed to be make-believe. I'm all for giving everyone a say, but I'd rather have people with an expert grasp of the relevant facts fronting a documentary. A glimpse of Steve R, sparked hopes, but he was gone in a flash and we were back with the (understandably) morose FPs for more aeons of emotive twaddle - or so it felt, until I switched off. I might try it again, but with the sound off and while doing the ironing.