So far this year, we have filmed for Ranch Hand Horizons in Henrietta Texas hunting turkey lurkeys and Alberta Canada hunting black bears. This week, we graced Bozeman, Montana with our presence J and had an incredibly unique hunting experience. This week, we were after the great Tatonka, commonly known as the North American Bison or Buffalo. I went into this trip tentatively as the longest driving vacation my family had ever taken was from Texas to New Mexico. Derrick’s family however are driving fools and driving to Montana wasn’t nuttin’! So, as I type this, the truck has registered 38 hours of driving time since we’ve left Shiner with 20 hours and 19 minutes left to drive to get home (according to iPhone’s google maps). Oh. My. Goodness! Our trip there was actually pretty darn good. We stopped in Colorado Springs at the Ranch Hand Truck Accessories store to check that out and boy is that an awesome store! It is one of seven we currently have (5 in Texas, 1 in OK, and 1 in COL). Beautiful store, lots of product choices, super awesome show room, and great location!
We spent the night in Wheatland, Wyoming at the stinkin’ awesome Motel 6 for $73.13 :) The next day, we visited the Battle of the Little Bighorn National Monument and learned about Custer’s Last Stand and we played Sporcle on the iPhone for hours. Also, the big stop of the day was a slight detour through Gilette, Wyoming to visit our gun sponsor, Bison Barrels. Hazer Burkley designed two custom 7 mags for me and Derrick and Derrick’s was done and ready to go. He shot it at 400 and 600 yards and boy howdy was it a shooter! He fell in love with it immediately and I think his confidence in shooting soared just for having such a sharp gun! It also helped to have our incredible new CDS reticle Leupold scopes mounted on there provided by our awesome sponsor, Leupold!
Derrick’s younger brother is ironically working on a project in Bozeman, MT for his company so we brought our sister-in-law Kelly with us so she could stay with Logan for the remainder of the week. Logan was housed at Homewood Suites, which is a BEAUTIFUL hotel and somehow or the other his co-workers heard we were all coming and sweet talked the hotel clerk into giving us a complimentary room so we wouldn’t all 4 have to share a room!!! Not sure how that happened, but boy are we grateful. The hotel was gorgeous and we had an awesome room. Such a blessing!
We headed out to Gallatin Gateway, MT on Sunday night to meet with our guide and to head to the ranch to scout and learn how the whole buffalo hunting thing went. We were on the Flying D, which we learned was owned by Ted Turner, media tycoon/billionaire/2nd largest private land owner in America. He owns 1.9 million acres of land in the US made up of 16 ranches…one of which being the Flying D which is ~125,000 acres. The largest free range bison herd lives here which is comprised of 2500 females plus calves and bulls. Boy, talk about a sight to see! We of course found the bison quickly as a herd that big is pretty hard to miss. We got to watch them for a long time and learn the difference between the mature bulls (can’t really miss the 2500+ pound tankers!) Except for the Canadian Rocky Mountains, I believe the Flying D Ranch was the most beautiful piece of property I have ever seen. The bison live in this 35,000 acre valley surrounded by rolling hills spotted with mule deer and elk and framed by snow capped mountain peaks.
The guide, Jim, was extremely informative and very pleasant to be with. We learned that the rut is just starting and that the bulls are coming out of the hills to join the cow/calf herd for breeding season. The bulls are either right in the middle of the group bellering and carrying on and sparring and such or they are resting around the perimeter several hundred yards away from the rest of the herd waiting on their opportunity to find a little love. A dominant bison bull that is making ruckus sounds exactly like a roaring lion. They take a deep breath, stick out their tongue, and make this crazy roaring noise.
We stayed til almost dark and then drove back through the beautiful ranch over beautiful streams and rivers and Jim dropped us back at our truck with instructions to be back at 6:30 AM the next morning.
The guide, Jim, was extremely informative and very pleasant to be with. We learned that the rut is just starting and that the bulls are coming out of the hills to join the cow/calf herd for breeding season. The bulls are either right in the middle of the group bellering and carrying on and sparring and such or they are resting around the perimeter several hundred yards away from the rest of the herd waiting on their opportunity to find a little love. A dominant bison bull that is making ruckus sounds exactly like a roaring lion. They take a deep breath, stick out their tongue, and make this crazy roaring noise.
The next morning, we were up early and made the 20 minute drive to our rendezvous point. Jim took us back to the ranch and we met up with our other guide, Mark, who was there to help once we shot one of the brutes. Again, we found the herd quickly, but unfortunately, there were very few bulls resting around the perimeters like they had been the night before. Now, interesting thing about bison…when you shoot a mature bull, they obviously take a little while to die since they’re so darn huge. Well as soon as any blood is exposed, the other bulls smell it in and come in to attack the dying bull (sad, I know…but important to the story). We were told it’s a dominance thing. The younger bulls try to kill the big bull to take his dominance and get rid of him. (Its possible that maybe the Native Americans of old taught bison to fight like cock fighting and maybe that trained habit stuck...? but I don’t think so J). So, based on that weird habit of bison, its important to find a bull that is by itself or at least on the perimeter of the herd or else by the time you get to it, the other bulls with have gored him and stomped him and torn up his cape and his meat and such…no bueno! Well we drove and drove and drove and there were no opportunities to hunt a good mature bull for several hours. We finally spotted one up on a hillside and we decided to go in for the stalk. Well, he saw us as we got closer and I guess he knew what we were up to because he immediately stood up and lumbered towards the herd at a good pace and we couldn’t get set up in time to get the shot off before he reached the cows & calves. We then spotted another bull that was kinda sorta in the herd, but he was the perfect bull we were looking for so our guide was willing to take the risk of shooting him close to the herd. Derrick wanted to shoot him at 300-400 yards with his new 7 mag, but the herd was crossing out in front of us and the bull we wanted was on the move to. By the time the bull was clear of any other bison, he was only 200 yards away. We didn’t want to risk shooting through him and hitting a cow or calf or immature bull, so Derrick had to wait and wait for the perfect shot. He finally shot and nailed him! The bull took the impact, took a couple of steps, and fell down….and in came the other bulls!! Ours was able to get his feet underneath him so Derrick shot again and again knocked him down. At this point, our other guide, Mark ran to his truck as fast as he could and drove to the frenzied bulls and drove them off as best he could. We then got over there as fast as we could. Bison are fairly comfortable with trucks as they go in and out of the ranch all the time, but they don’t like people so Jim jumped out with these crazy noise sticks things and ran around yelling at the mad bulls…crazy! Right?! Once the coast was clear, we got out to inspect our….MONSTER! Oh my goodness…we knew bison were big, but we had NO idea how BIG! There is no ground shrinkage when it comes to bison! Holy Schmoly that guy was overwhelmingly huge. Have I made it clear he was HUGE???! Bison are the largest animal in North America and Montana bison are significantly bigger than Nebraska or Colorado buffalo…and especially the Texas buffalo you see occasionally on game ranches or cutting horse training facilities. We walked up to this guy and gawked at his massiveness. We took lots of pictures and filmed everything we needed to for the show and then the hoist truck arrived.
There is no way in the world to budge this guy. Like Derrick, Jim, and Mark couldn’t even push him over with all three pushing as hard as they could. They had a 12,000 lb Warn winch and 15 foot tall hoist that they used to lift him up enough to gut him…..wow, talk about guts! They then used the hoist to lift him high enough to lay him on the back of a flat bed truck. Mark then left with the bison to head to the processor. We followed soon after and showed up at Amsterdam Custom Meats to see how the heck an animal that big is processed. Those fellas made quick work of it, but unbeknownst to us, there is so much heat in the meat because of its size that it has to be in a cooler at least overnight…they wanted to keep it until Friday! We told them we couldn’t stay til Friday as we hand’t budgetd that much time for this trip so we told them to just hunk it up into pieces and we’d come by in the morning for it.
There is no way in the world to budge this guy. Like Derrick, Jim, and Mark couldn’t even push him over with all three pushing as hard as they could. They had a 12,000 lb Warn winch and 15 foot tall hoist that they used to lift him up enough to gut him…..wow, talk about guts! They then used the hoist to lift him high enough to lay him on the back of a flat bed truck. Mark then left with the bison to head to the processor. We followed soon after and showed up at Amsterdam Custom Meats to see how the heck an animal that big is processed. Those fellas made quick work of it, but unbeknownst to us, there is so much heat in the meat because of its size that it has to be in a cooler at least overnight…they wanted to keep it until Friday! We told them we couldn’t stay til Friday as we hand’t budgetd that much time for this trip so we told them to just hunk it up into pieces and we’d come by in the morning for it.
Since we had an extra night we didn’t expect, we had the chance to eat dinner with Logan and Kelly and then we went into Four Corners for some real style go-Kart racing! We then turned in relatively early and showed up at the meat market around 8:15AM. We now have 850 pounds of meat in 6 coolers and 3 meat boxes in the truck! Because we didn’t have time for them to process it, they just hunked it up, vacuum sealed it, and now we have a HUGE project ahead of us. We still had to pay full price as though they had fully processed it all :( but that’s what they charged for handling it. We now have to either process it ourselves or pay someone else again to actually process it in sausage or ground meat or steaks. Bummer…but we couldn’t wait several more days til it was ready. We also dropped off the hide (which is 300 pounds by itself) at a taxidermist to have it tanned….so some day we will have a giant, beautiful bison head to hang on our floor to ceiling rock fireplace (which we don’t have!) :)
We are now on our way home and look forward to one day seeing a shoulder mount of Clark (as in Lewis & Clark) or Tonka (as in the Sioux name for Bison)….not sure what we’re going to name him yet.
Ya know, no one has ever claimed bison hunting as the hardest hunting in the world. I mean, there are thousands of them, so they’re kind of hard to miss. Some people say they’re dumb and easy, but as the guide pointed out…its kind of like Mike Tyson walking into a bar. They have nothing to be afraid of…they’re the biggest and baddest around. Besides wolves which are just now infiltrating that area, they have no enemies. So, they come across dumb and defenseless, but really they’re just nonchalant about danger. However, this hunt was different that most as the appreciation of the beauty of the country, the majesty of the animal, and the nostalgia of the history of the bison in North American history made it an emotional experience….an unforgettable experience…a hunt of a lifetime.
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