American Buffalo

by Steven Rinella

  Grizzlies can handily kill buffalo calves, but they encounter serious problems when they try to attack adults. First off, there’s the matter of speed. A grizzly can hit top speeds of over forty miles per hour, which is faster than a buffalo, but they can’t sustain that speed long enough to wear a buffalo down. Another issue is a buffalo’s horns. Grizzlies are not as agile and wiry as wolves, and it seems as though they can’t effectively avoid a buffalo’s defense mechanism. There’s a documented case from Yellowstone in which a buffalo managed to kill a sow grizzly by punching a pair of holes through its belly and busting every rib in its side.

  This hardly keeps grizzlies from getting buffalo meat, because they make much better thieves than killers. In one study, researchers found that grizzly bears kill only 5 percent of the meat that they consume. They get the remaining 95 percent from carrion. In Yellowstone National Park, rangers once recorded the visits of twenty-three separate grizzlies to one dead buffalo. That should not, however, be taken as a suggestion that they prefer rancid carcasses. Grizzlies will spend days following in the wakes of hunting wolf packs. In 2000, in the Lamar valley of Yellowstone National Park, a grizzly bear trailed a pack of wolves so closely that it was able to steal a buffalo calf from them before they finished killing it. When a grizzly gets its paws on a large animal, it will usually rip open the belly and eat the liver first. Grizzlies also like lungs and other organ meats. It’s probably because they can force down a lot of soft tissue in a hurry; they want to maximize their caloric intake before a bigger bear comes along and steals what they stole.

  Knowing that the guts will be of primary interest to the bears, I decide to haul them in a downwind direction. That way a bear that is following the odor will hit the guts before he hits me. I pull out the liver for my own use and set it on a log. At first I think I’ll drag the whole pile a couple hundred yards through the trees, but once I get started, I can see that this isn’t going to happen. I can barely budge it, even with the help of the slippery snow. I could lighten the load by cutting the stomach free, but I don’t want to spill everything out and create even more odor. I break into a sweat after tugging the guts only about fifty yards. I give it a few more yanks and then snag the stomach on a sharp stick. It rips open and out spills a load of food that looks almost exactly like a bag of lawn-mower trimmings. That’ll have to be far enough. I look up the hill at my rifle, next to the carcass, and think that I should have taken it with me.

  My absence from the buffalo is an invitation to the six or seven gray jays that have been gathering in the treetops. They’re about the size of robins, with much stronger beaks and more curiosity. They have this way of cocking their heads back and forth while assessing the safety of a situation. It makes them seem like something out of a Disney cartoon. Old-timers call them camp robbers. They like to hang around any kind of activity involving predators—bears, humans, foxes—figuring that food is bound to make an appearance. They smell meat from great distances above the ground, probably as the odor wafts on the upward air currents. If there’s blood on the snow, they find it even faster, as red only means one thing in the wilderness. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that jays automatically cue in on rifle shots in heavily hunted areas. I don’t want them shitting all over the meat as they peck at the buffalo, so I start a little gray jay bait pile about thirty yards off to the side. As long as they can eat something, they’ll stay over there and leave me alone. I give them a few wads of kidney fat, because I like the way they wipe their beaks on twigs after eating it. They do this with a quick, back-and-forth action that reminds me of sharpening a knife.

  The carcass is significantly lighter now, and I can rock it back and forth. It’s still ungainly enough that it might slide and roll into an unworkable position, so I kick a few boulders free from the ground and position them to form a retaining wall. I also manage to twist the head around and jab a horn into the ground so that it’s acting as a support on the downhill side. Sitting against a tree, I place my feet on the buffalo’s ribs and heave against it with my feet. It slowly tips. I rock it a few more times, giving more pressure each time, and then it rolls. The side I’ve been working on—the side where I removed the back ham—is facing toward the sky.

  The front shoulder will come off easier than the back. There’s no ball joint to deal with. I cut the hide around the ankle, just below the shank, and then saw it off with my bone saw. Then I take my ripping knife and make a cut up the inside of the leg. I start at the ankle, go just behind the armpit, and meet up with the ventral incision. The hide peels off the leg quickly, and severing it from the body is almost effortless. With my back arched and the weight resting on my belly, I waddle over to a tree and lean the shoulder against the trunk.

  I’m ready for a lunch break, but first I take my skinning knife and work the hide back to the backbone on the upward-facing side. There’s some bright orange fat encasing the loins along the spine. I cut some of the fat away for cooking and then pull the hide back into place like I’m tucking the buffalo in for the night. That will help keep it from freezing too solid overnight, and also keep the birds off. I’ve got half of the legs removed and half of the carcass skinned. Seems like a good place to stop.

  There’s a wad of game bags stuffed into the bottom of my pack. The bags are made of stretchy, breathable material that is almost unrippable. It’s as thin as cheesecloth; you could cover your whole body with the amount that you could fit in your mouth. I work a bag around the buffalo’s shoulder. The bag will keep the leg from getting dirty, and it makes it easier to grip. I tip the leg over in the snow and then slide it into my backpack, shoulder first with the ankle sticking out. Only a little more than half fits into the backpack, but at least it’s the heavy end. I tie my sleeping bag to the outside of the pack and load up a few more things that I’ll need for the night. I roll the rest of my gear into my food bag and then wedge the package into the limbs of a small spruce tree. I wish there were some trees big enough to hang the buffalo’s meat out of a bear’s reach, but there’s nothing nearly thick enough.

  It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. I sit down next to my pack in order to wiggle into the shoulder straps. Once the pack is on, I struggle to my knees. From there I can stand up and lift the weight of the leg, which is severely off balance. I figure that the pack weighs a bit less than one hundred pounds. I get a compass reading, shoulder my rifle, and then start toward the Chetaslina. It’s about one mile away. I’ve got my bone saw in my hand because I’ll need to clear a trail through the brush. It will take me probably seven trips like this to get the meat down to the Chetaslina. From there it’s still three miles to my main camp along the Copper. I’m not sure how I’ll get the meat down that far. I’ll figure that out later.

  When I get away from the carcass, I start to think that I’m being paranoid about the grizzlies. They were headed upriver, away from here. Plus, the carcass is brand-new. What are the chances they’ll find it before I get it to my base camp? And besides that, I lit a fire and spent the whole day there, spreading around plenty of human odor. I tell myself that I’ve probably got a couple days before I run into any trouble. I continue along, hacking my way through the brush. I beat a trail over logs and under logs, through thickets and around them. If I keep tromping through the same place, I’ll eventually work up a good trail. I use my knife to shave thin strips of bark from the sides of trees to mark my path in case the snow melts. In places it’s impossible to proceed, and I have to back out and try a new route. When this happens, I put a scratch across the bark peelings so that I don’t get confused in the dark.

  My wishful thinking about the bears vanishes when I return to the bank of the Chetaslina. There are tracks all over the riverbank, pacing back and forth. I’m just about downwind of the carcass. I’ll bet they were walking the riverbanks when they picked up the odor. Shit. I drop my pack and unload the buffalo’s leg. There aren’t any trees around here that are big enough to tie the leg out of reach of a grizzly. Instead, I h
ang my sweaty face mask from a tree limb and drape my jacket over the meat. To add a little extra human odor, I drape my sleeping bag over the leg and light a small fire. Then I fill my bottle with water and drop in a crushed iodine tablet before I start to walk back up toward the kill site. You’re supposed to give iodine a half hour or so to work its magic, but I chug the bottle after ten minutes in hopes that I can produce some urine.

  When I get back to the buffalo, I strip out of my long underwear and drape the bottoms over the meat. I make a scarecrow with the top. If I were braver, I’d sleep here tonight and make sure nothing messes with the buffalo. But I’m too chickenshit for that. Rather than heading back down with an empty pack, I pull the hide back from the buffalo and carve off the entire loin. It runs from the hip all the way to the base of the neck, like a loaf of French bread as long as a human leg. I have to cut it in half just to fit it in my pack. There’s still a little extra room in my pack, so I remove the tenderloin from inside the cavity and put that in the top of the pack. I pull the hide back over the buffalo and start down toward the Chetaslina.

  When I get near the river, I pick up a set of grizzly tracks that are walking on top of the boot prints that I’d just made an hour ago. I get a tingly sensation of fear, a warm upward rush from my stomach. I peer through the underbrush, looking for dark shapes. Nothing. The bear tracks are headed both ways, as if it walked toward the carcass and then turned around. After a few more minutes of walking, I find the place where one of the bears entered and exited the trail. I don’t see any tracks from the other bear.

  The leg is untouched, and there aren’t any tracks in the snow next to it. The bears were apparently afraid to approach, but still, I don’t relish the idea of sleeping here tonight. Besides, I’m missing a layer of clothes. I’d probably freeze my ass off. I stand for a moment, staring at the river and trying to decide what to do. I’ve got the buffalo’s highest-quality cuts of meat in my pack, the loin and tenderloin, and I figure that I might as well haul them back to the Copper and spend the night in my tent. It’s three miles away and on the other side of the river. If I hurry, I’ll get there before dark.

  13

  I DREAMED ABOUT BEARS LAST NIGHT. They looked at me, spoke to me, turned into people that I’ve known. I have dreams like that often, dreams in which the animal and human worlds morph together in bizarre ways; I believe the dreams are the result of being a hunter, because the animals that appear to me are creatures that I’ve stalked and eaten in real life. The dreams started in my teens, back when I used to trap hundreds of muskrats every year to sell their pelts. Muskrats live in swamps, lakes, and rivers, and one of the most reliable ways to catch them is to set foothold traps on their floating feed beds, which are dinner-plate-sized mats of food and vegetation that the muskrats collect and store for later use. You run four feet of bailing wire from the trap chain and anchor it beneath the water’s surface. In the morning, if the trap’s gone, you know that a muskrat got caught and pulled the trap into the water and drowned. I’d reach down into the water up to my shoulder and feel around for the wire and then follow that wire with my hand until I felt the fur. In my dreams, though, I’d find the hair of a human.

  Bears are the worst animal to dream about, because they sometimes act like people even outside of my dreams. They rise to their hind feet with such fluidity and ease that it’s startling to watch. I can’t help but think of human behaviors that correspond to their activities. I remember one time in early May when I was hunting black bears at the base of an avalanche slide in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana. A female bear and her two cubs were grazing on vegetation that was springing out of ground tilled by avalanches. I was watching the bear through my rifle scope when she caught my odor. She stood up and looked right at me, reminding me of the way you might stand to greet someone who just walked into the room. I felt rude for having a rifle trained on her chest.

  The Chetaslina is running like a frozen daiquiri. I listen from my tent as the slushy water makes a tingling noise against the rocks. My back is a little sore from bending over and butchering all day yesterday. I do some stretches while lying in my sleeping bag and then unzip the tent door and crawl outside into the cold to make a fire. I stand in the smoke until my boots are thawed enough to get my feet inside. When I cross the river in my dry suit and step onto the other bank, the drips of water running down my legs freeze into little beads of ice. I pull off the suit as quickly as possible and put the liners and boots back on before they freeze solid again. I start the walk up toward the carcass. Being on my feet and getting warmed up makes my back feel better.

  Speaking of bears, the two grizzlies must have continued to hang around the area during the night. I cut the first set of tracks when I’m still a quarter mile away from where I left the buffalo’s front leg. I can see where one of the bears came downriver toward my camp along the Copper and then turned around and walked back. It’s unnerving, the way these bears will pace back and forth, testing and exploring. It reminds me of a burglar casing out a job. I continue along, taking it slow and easy, walking in the same path that the bear took. I’ve got my rifle down off my shoulder with the butt plate tucked up against my hip. My binoculars are in my other hand; I’m using them to study the brush up ahead of me for dark shapes or movement. I know I left the meat on the edge of the river, on this side, but I don’t have an exact fix on the location. If a grizzly took the leg, he’d probably drag it off somewhere. That somewhere might be here.

  Once I can see the face mask that I left hanging from the tree limb, I stop to listen. I can hear the croak of ravens off toward the carcass. They make a noise that sounds like ripping an empty beer can in half. I move closer and see that the leg is undisturbed. Surprisingly, the ground all around the leg is plastered with grizzly tracks. Some of the prints would have put the bear into easy reach of the meat—the closest prints are just thirty inches away. I can’t believe that it would have come that close and then lost its nerve. Unless I happened to just come along and scare it off.

  I take a piss next to the leg and start up my path leading toward the kill site. There are a couple of fresh sets of grizzly tracks over my boots, but after a few minutes of walking there’s nothing but my own prints. Bright little splotches of red and blue in the snow mark where I stepped on remnant crowberries and blueberries left over from the summer. Soon I can see the general area of the carcass and the blood-streaked path that it cut in the snow. I’d be smart to move upwind and let my smell blow down through the area, but I want to get a good look at whatever’s happening. I move in a half circle downwind until I’m on the hillside above the carcass and looking down into the tangle of aspens where it crashed. I don’t see anything except birds, and I haven’t hit any new grizzly tracks. The gray jays lift off the gut pile as I approach. I lean my rifle against the rib cage and unload my gear.

  When I initially drew this tag, the world up here along the Copper River seemed so huge and unknowable. All of my questions were questions of space: Where can I go? How can I get there? Now the world is shrunk down to this small patch of snow and ground, hide and flesh. I like the way it feels here; my own little hangout. After collecting some wood, I get a fire going down in the spruce trees below the buffalo. My goal is to give the bears one more reason to stay away, but it also amplifies the homey feel of the kill site. Looking up the hill, I think again about the blood streaks from where the buffalo slid down the hillside. Low-flying aircraft would see that for sure, and they’d see the smoke from the fire. I’m on public land, totally legal, but someone might wonder how I got up here. They might wonder if I was trespassing or if I actually came up the river channel the way I’m supposed to. If they were curious enough, they could buzz circles overhead and look for my boot prints. I can’t tell if I’m being paranoid or not. Thinking about bears is making me jumpy.

  The hide is partially frozen, and it crinkles as I pull it back away from the meat. The body is starting to freeze up, too. If the massive neck and head
freeze solid, it will be really difficult to remove the skull and clean it of flesh. I’d have to haul the whole thing out of here in one big, meaty piece. Grabbing the buffalo by the horns, I can twist its head into slightly different positions. The buffalo’s body is stiff enough that it stays in whatever position I put it, like one of those wire-bodied Gumby dolls. With the head tipped to the side, I make two long slits with my knife, each starting where you touch your throat to see if your lymph nodes are swollen. I extend each of those cuts along the inside edges of the jawbone until they meet at the point of the chin. Then I pull back the triangle-shaped flap of hide, slicing it as it comes, until I can access and sever the base of the tongue. It spills out like a giant two-and-a-half-pound slug backing away from a wet, toothy sac. To eat it, you just boil it until the outside coating starts to peel away.

  The simple, perfect ease of extracting the tongue is satisfying. I think of a day when I passed through Fort Pierre, South Dakota, in order to look at an area along the Missouri River where several hundred Sioux hunters slaughtered fourteen hundred buffalo and cut out the tongues. This was in the summer of 1830. They did the killing and cutting in the morning and then hauled the tongues into a trading post and swapped them for liquor. The remaining 1.5 million pounds of untouched buffalo parts were left on the prairie to rot. Since then, historians have used that anecdote for many purposes that have suited their own needs of the moment: to demonstrate the evils of alcohol; to prove the corrupting nature of capitalism; to argue that Indians were not parsimonious conservationists; and to show that Indians were practical about getting what they needed from the buffalo.