American buffalo
A hunt for the American buffalo--an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination.In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds--there's only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful--Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. Throughout these adventures, Rinella found himself contemplating his own place among the 14,000 years' worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo's place in the American experience. At the time of the Revolutionary War, North America was home to approximately 40 million buffalo, the largest herd of big mammals on the planet, but by the mid-1890s only a few hundred remained. Now that the buffalo is on the verge of a dramatic ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of how, and if, we can dare to share our land with a beast that is the embodiment of the American wilderness. American Buffalo is a narrative tale of Rinella's hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity.
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What Hacker News says
- I was told when I worked at Philmont Scout Ranch [1] that they had a pure herd.
Other than that, I know Steven Rinella listed a few pure herds in his (excellent) book [2] on the American Buffalo, but I'd have to dig it out to find them for you.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzyMrBUys90
[2] https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/...
ETA: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/wind-cave-bison-genetics.ht...
"Wind Cave and Yellowstone National Parks are the only two federal herds to have population sizes large enough for sufficient testing. Both herds show no evidence of cattle introgression."
So there are at least two
- A plug for Steve Rinella's excellent book, "American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon".[0]
He recounts his grueling trip in the Copper River Basin in Alaska on a hunt for a bison, and every other chapter continues a parallel telling of the history of the species in North America, particularly the archaeological evidence of prehistoric hunting of the animal, from large kill sites to fascinating sites like the Mesa site in northern Alaska[1] linking arctic cultures to Paleoindians in midcontinent.
It's a really enjoyable book, and he narrates the audio book.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/...
[1] https://www.blm.gov/programs/cultural-heritage-and-paleontol...
- On a related note, Steven Rinella's book "American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon" is mandatory reading for anyone interested in the history of these magnificent beasts.
- I've added this to my reading list, thanks for sharing.
In another thread earlier today I was talking about the book American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. He has a whole section dedicated to the demise of bison in water, mud, floods, and swamps. In one bit he mentions that an entire herd was killed when they ran into a river too deep to ford, resulting in a literal stream of tens of thousands of bison corpses floating down the river.
