Lifestyles

Dusan Smetana/Windigoimages.com

The Great Buffalo Roundup

No, they ain’t kiddin’. The South Dakota Buffalo Roundup is serious business. Every October in Custer State Park, smack in the center of the legendary Black Hills, a hundred men (and some women) on horseback and in ranger trucks head out to bring in some of the most ornery critters on earth.

“Don’t get yerself ’tween a mama and her calf unless the life insurance is paid up,” Bob Lantis said. The wrangler boss ought to know. He’s been doing this every October for the last 34 years. “If you ride with me you gotta be willing to get in if there’s a wreck and get the rider out of it.” His instructions were practical. Park rangers mostly gave directions as to where and how they wanted the herd of wild bison moved.

There are wrecks. The wrangler boss himself rode into one. Tried to prevent a “gunsel”—sort of what cowboys call a novice—from heading over a cliff. Bob’s own horse hit the brakes at the edge, reared up and let his rider down square on the saddle horn right where it hurts most. The pain was so bad he saw stars. His horse had a broken leg, and trapped Bob under the saddle so he couldn’t pull out his pistol to shoot it and put it out of its misery. Surely about that moment in time the rider himself would have liked to be put out of his misery as well.

“Other riders came up and got me out. They put me on the ground flat and covered me with a blanket. Well, of course, they called my wife and she came up in a ranger truck. When she saw me lying under the blanket with my head covered she started to cry. ‘My husband, my husband’s dead.’ I pulled the cover down off my face and told her, ‘You don’t get the life insurance money yet honey.’”

Funny story, but at every buffalo roundup there are ample breaks and bruises, wrecks and accidents. The peril is worth the tale, and there’s a waiting list for riders who want to join Bob Lantis and park rangers over two days, pushing some 1,500 buffalo off the range—where they roam wild and free all year long—into corrals to be inspected, inoculated, hot iron branded, sorted and separated.

Custer State Park consists of 73,000 acres nestled in the Black Hills about a half-hour from the Mt. Rushmore National Monument, as the crow flies. Custer, South Dakota, is near one entrance to the park. Custer has character, gas stations, trendy restaurants and boutiques with all manner of stuffed buffalo knick-knacks. One thing is clear inside the park—the buffalo are plentiful and real. These are not critters to tangle with.

There are eight campsites within the park, and one is reserved as a horse camp. Some riders trailered their horses in, tied them to the horse van and dropped feed for them to graze on. Big mistake. A large bull buffalo trotted in, sniffed the feed and barged in on the tied horses, which immediately panicked. The horses yanked and pulled at their halter ropes and eventually were gored to death by the big bull. The buffalo paid no further attention at all to the horses as it ate their feed.

There might be grizzly stories here and there, and bear stories every season in National Parks, but buffalo know how to take care of themselves. At a ton or so, they can push their weight around at speeds attaining 35 mph. That’s as fast as a horse can run...a fast horse.

The park is hilly and wooded. The bison herds spread out over the land to graze. It is a mighty big area to cover, and much of it is not accessible to vehicles. Thus, riders on horseback—volunteers all, save for the park rangers that ride with them—must get into the arroyos and gullies and push them out.

“Leave the big bulls. Don’t try to move them,” one of the rangers told a group of riders. “Don’t stress a mother with a nursing calf. They’ll come for you and it won’t be a bluff,” he added.

Ever Bite A Buffalo Hump?

“Make mine well done.”

The waiter hesitated. The restaurant owner’s wife, who was sitting opposite me, nursing her white wine, explained why.

“It gets tough when cooked too much.”

“I got my own teeth,” I told her and the waiter laughed. She spit her wine and chortled that she had her own teeth, too, but meant she didn’t want me stuck with tough meat.

Buffalo is lean meat. There once was a craze to get away from fatty foods high in cholesterol, thus buffalo was in. It was trendy when rubber, bland tasting chicken breasts didn’t hack it for those who craved red meat. As ever-changing studies regale us with what is good and bad, then what is bad and good and bad again, buffalo ranchers have been left high and dry over a few tough years when trendy didn’t catch on.

Lean meat is hard to prepare properly.

Indians relished buffalo tongue as a delicacy. Native Americans consumed the entire buffalo—took its hide, bones and even the organs to make containers. With western expansion hunters, took only the tongues, leaving the carcasses to rot, and only sometimes cutting the hump for pot roast.

To my taste, buffalo tongue is not too appealing. It tastes something like the smoke process generally used to make it, salty if pickled, and nothing especially delectable. Then again, I don’t particularly like tongue of any kind.

Buffalo roast, however, when cooked long in a Dutch oven, is delicious. The meat is lean, dense and retains a more gamey flavor than beef. It is filling and satisfying and not at all tough. The meat is juicy when prepared in a Dutch oven and cooked long at 350 degrees.

Buffalo steak has little fat. The meat is not marbled, and when well prepared is quite tasty. While I like my meat well done, it is true that over-cooking can toughen buffalo, but not appreciably, at least to my palate and jaw bones.

Buffalo burgers are never really 100 percent buffalo meat. The ground buffalo is too lean to hang together in patties, so it is usually mixed with 10 percent beef to give it sticking power on the grill. The taste is mild, not usually what one would associate with wild game, yet slightly stronger than ground beef with less grease.

If you’ve never tasted buffalo meat, give it a try. It is a healthy meat that is coming back into favor now that trends have ceased trying to make it exotic.

Riders are split up into teams. Team leaders carry pistols to be used to ward off an attacking buffalo in a pinch. “Your team leaders got buckshot loads in their pistols. They know how to use them,” a veteran ranger told the assembled group of riders. “Don’t count on it doing much to discourage a charging mama. Get out of the way fast.” He waited until an aide circulated the attendance sheet and everybody signed a release and waiver form. Then there was a prayer.

The riders had coffee before sun up and got started around 8 a.m. One woman on a spirited riding horse had an inauspicious start when her mount threw her as the rest of her team galloped off. There were even fancy dressed women on riding mules. The outfits looked like it set them back a wad of money, and their trailer was the fanciest among cow dung caked and rusted rigs that belonged to local ranch hands. She rode along a cliff side where a string of five hundred buffalo were moving.

It was more than the fine riding mule wanted to be part of, so it bucked her off and ran rip-roaring along the caravan of ranger vehicles until one of the mounted rangers grabbed the mule’s reins. Horses and mules recognize the difference between cows and buffaloes pretty quick, and it takes a seasoned horse to work buffalo.

“Crack!”

Josh Lantis’ bull whip sounded like a rifle shot as he galloped behind a tight-bunched herd that was making for a copse of trees. If the bison got into the trees and bushes it would be double hard to get them out. Josh is Bob Lantis’ grandson, part of Bob’s outfit that guides tourists on horseback into the Lamar River Valley of Yellowstone. What he called a wicked buffalo cow that doubled back on him would not be printable nor dainty outside of the roundup. The whip worked where his cajoling words were ignored. If one of the female wranglers riding nearby heard or was offended by Josh’s comments, she didn’t say, and likely had her own choice remarks when the herd tried to double back.

The older members of the herd know the drill. It ends with them being pushed into squeeze pens at the corrals, sorted and, for some, sold for meat or as seed stock to buffalo ranchers. It is not a likable memory, and so they don’t relish being pushed into it. Big enough to object, buffalo don’t behave like cattle. They are not really afraid of horse and rider. Too big and powerful to be easily intimidated.

“It’s what we call a little finesse. We get ’em going and head them where we can drive them into the corrals with trucks,” one of the rangers said. The park put every vehicle they had into service. Odd, the sight of buffalo being rounded up with a fire engine, but so they were with brush trucks and pumpers, Jeeps and pick-ups.

Governor Mike Rounds has maintained the state’s tradition in Custer State Park. The annual Governor’s Buffalo Roundup is a nationally televised event. When the large herd is finally pushed toward the corrals, some ten thousand spectators, kept safely up on a high hill at an overlook point, cheer the riders on. Once passed a certain point, when the buffalo are bunched tight, the riders fall back and rangers in the vehicles do the final pushing.

Hunting, Fishing And Adventure In The Black Hills

South Dakota maintains a website with detailed information about hunting and fishing licenses and fees.

The Black Hills offer many opportunities for big and small game viewing and hunting, although mountain lion, elk and bighorn sheep hunting is restricted to residents. Turkey and deer hunting is open to residents and non-residents.

Within Custer State Park there are several picturesque lakes that yield rainbow trout. Brookies and brown trout are found in nearby streams. Only paddleboats and canoes are allowed on Sylvan Lake, but Stockade Lake permits small outboards. Two other lakes in the park, Bismarck and Legion Lakes, provide sportsmen with ample opportunity to cast for trout.

At nearby Angostura Dam and the Belle Fourche Reservoir, know locally as Orman Dam, fishermen do well catching walleye.

The Black Hills offers great rock climbing, hiking, horseback riding and mountain biking. Harney Peak is the tallest spot between the Pyrenees Mountains of Europe and the Rockies. At 7,212 feet elevation, there is a Civilian Conservation Corps stone and concrete observation tower with magnificent views of the surrounding area. The trails are kept in good condition for hikers and bikers, as well horseback riding. Nearby are Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monuments.

For more information visit travelsd.com, or call (800) 952-3625.

There are few of the trucks that get away without some new dents. Lots of them get stuck, and even the best four-wheel drive vehicles sometimes get into trouble in rough terrain. Bison horns puncture steel and drive dents into metal, so rangers try not to worry them too close.

“Hold back. Don’t push that mother. Let her calf catch up,” a radio crackled. A ranger watching from a vantage point gave the order to a team leader. He signaled his riders and the last of the bison were left to the vehicles.

Dust choked the air and covered everything with a red film of grit. The Black Hills are arid. Top that with South Dakota’s fifteen year drought and the terrain is dry. Yet there was no drought for the wranglers, who lunched with barbeque and cold beer after they put up their horses.

Governor Rounds hosted a campfire that night. He drove in the roundup, had to change his clothes fast, drive to bid God’s speed to departing South Dakota National Guard troops heading to Iraq, then get back for the campfire. He burned his marshmallow, but even that was good fun in a state where everybody calls the governor by his first name. Then again, there aren’t too many governors who can brag about a state buffalo roundup.

John Christopher Fine grew up with horses. He is president of the American Heritage Iberian Mustang Foundation, dedicated to rescuing and saving the last descendants of the Spanish conquistadors’ horses left in the U.S. He is the author of 24 books and writes 100 articles for newspapers and magazines each year.