Creek Running North

[Here’s a piece I wrote in Autumn 2000 after visiting a bison ranch in Del Puerto Canyon, east of San Jose. I rode out into the bison area with Sue Byars, the rancher, was mightily impressed with the dignity and restrained ferocity of the critters… and then bought part of one from her and ate it all up. Ah, nuance.]

"This fence is basically a formality." Sue Byars pats the post to her right. Thicker than a railroad tie and twice as long, it - and a few hundred like it nearby - bears a fearsome skein of barbed wire woven into a six-inch mesh. I’ve seen less substantial fences marking contested national borders. "If they wanted to get through it, they could, with no trouble. As long as we feed them, they’re happy to stay inside."

On the other side of the barbed wire a young bison cow walks toward a water trough eyeing Byars and me, and the two dogs at our feet. With each step, she exhales pointedly: the sound resembles nothing so much as far-off drumming. "They use that sound to talk to their calves: that’s how they keep track of each other. A calf will stay with its mother for about two years. If you look at a typical herd of bison, you’ll see a lot of threesomes: a cow, a calf and a yearling, hanging out together, with the yearling trying to get in between the calf and its mother. The next year, the yearling generally seems to forget who its mother is."

As Byars speaks, a calf and a yearling approach us, frankly curious. The yearling is somewhat taller than a large Great Dane, and considerably bulkier. The calf is two-thirds as big: approximately Saint Bernard. There is no apparent rivalry between these siblings. They come to within a foot of the fence, regard us walleyed for a moment, then turn their attention back to each other. Head-butting one another gently, wrestling with their nubs of horn, the affection between them is palpable - even before the yearling starts to clean the calf’s face with its six inch, slate gray tongue. It looks like love.

The sky has been making up its mind all morning. It pelts us for a moment with big, warm raindrops, then relents. "Let’s go," says Byars. "I put some hay in the truck before you got here. We’ll drive in and feed them."

There are two dozen bison on the Del Puerto Canyon Bison Ranch, which Byars and her husband Michael Perez have owned for the last ten years. These may well be the first bison ever to live within the steep, russet slopes of upper Del Puerto Canyon. There is abundant fossil evidence that two extinct species of giant bison, Bison antiquus (the ancestor of modern bison) and Bison latifrons (with a seven-foot spread between horn tips) lived in Pleistocene California. There is some uncertainty as to whether modern bison (Bison bison) ever lived wild anywhere in California. The answer depends on whom you ask. Some sources claim there were bison in the Central Valley. Others say bison ranged no further west than the Great Salt Lake and upper Snake River drainage. Jameson and Peeters, in their book California Mammals, state rather decisively that bison lived in and around the Modoc Plateau in Northeastern California, and that they were killed off in the early years of the nineteenth century by local indigenes.

Even if Bison bison grazed the pre-Columbian grasslands of Stanislaus County alongside the tule elk and pronghorn, it’s unlikely they ever came this far into Del Puerto Canyon. At the canyon’s mouth, just above where Del Puerto Creek runs out into the broad plain near Patterson and Crows Landing, there is abundant grass on the broad hills. The land is open range, and blasé longhorns block the occasional traffic on Del Puerto Canyon Road. But below the bison ranch, the canyon becomes constricted and steeply walled. Del Puerto Creek cuts through a wedge of ultramafic bedrock, squeegeed off the Earth’s mantle by an errant tectonic plate. The soil those rocks support is rich in metals toxic to plants; manganese, nickel, cobalt. The vegetation recalls that of the Hualapai Mountains in Arizona. Gray pines and juniper form a thin canopy over chamise and sagebrush. Grass is sparse. Very little grows here of interest to grazing animals. Aside from a few acorns and oak leaves, what the Del Puerto Canyon bison eat comes up from the valley floor in a hay truck.

It’s said that if you want to make a small fortune in ranching, you’d best start with a large one. After ten years of accruing expenses, the Del Puerto Canyon Bison Ranch is just beginning to sell a little meat, a few skins and skulls. As is the case with many ranchers, both Byars and Perez have full-time jobs in town. He’s a skilled machinist: she’s a facilities planner at the Livermore Lab. They feed their stock twice a day. Other than that, the bison take care of themselves during daylight hours. It seems to be working: the herd has quadrupled in the last decade. "They do just fine with minimal care," says Byars. "They don’t need us around all the time. In fact, they prefer to be left alone. You couldn’t do that with cattle; they’re always getting sick. You have to watch them all the time. Bison hardly ever get sick if you don’t bring a sick animal into the herd. We’ve built our herd up by breeding, not by buying new cows, just so we don’t run the risk of importing brucellosis or TB. We may rethink that at some point, because of the possibility of inbreeding. But that hasn’t been a problem so far. Our animals are really healthy.

"And that’s a good thing," Byars continues, "because it’s not like you can get in among the herd to take care of a sick bison. On the couple occasions where we’ve lost a calf, its mother won’t even let us take the body away for a few days. We’ve had to feed them on the other end of the pen, wait for the mother to get hungry enough to leave her dead calf to go eat, and then try to get it out of the pen before she notices. And then she’ll look for her missing calf for days, walking up and down the fenceline, calling for it. The rest of the herd will get really agitated. They know someone’s missing."

Byars says the ranch’s goal is to build up a herd of about three dozen cows, selling off the calves as they reach marketable weight in three years. She and Perez have sold only a handful of animals so far. Separating those bison from the herd has proven challenging. "We put hay in that pen over there, and back a truck up to the chute leading out of it. We wait for the animal to go in there by himself, then we close the gate and get him up into the truck. It can take a couple of days." Once in the truck, the bison heads down the canyon to slaughter in Los Banos, and then to a Manteca butcher. An average bison yields a quarter ton of meat, which sells for five dollars a pound and up. Byars and Perez sell most of their meat directly to individual consumers, though you can eat Del Puerto Canyon bison at Berkeley’s Bison Brewery. Bison also provide valuable dry goods. Collectors will pay more than a thousand dollars for a large skull, and a good-sized winter hide, not yet bleached blonde in the summer sun, can bring another grand.

Twenty years ago, eating bison was essentially unheard of in the US. Now, it’s hard to find a city without at least one bison-serving restaurant. Lower in fat than chicken, bison meat has found favor among increasingly health-conscious diners. Its flavor is usually compared to beef. I find the comparison wanting. Most beef sold in the US seems about as appetizing as wet cardboard until you add salt, primarily a vehicle for barbecue sauce or Worcestershire. If cooked properly, which is to say hardly at all, the flesh of bison possesses a subtlety of flavor that beef can approach only with careful marinating and strict attention to the clock.

Overcooked bison is another matter, tending toward a leathery texture. Still, even tragically well-done buffalo steaks have their merits. Driving through Oklahoma in 1999, I broke fast at the Cherokee Trading Post near El Reno, basically a Denny’s with faux-Navajo sand paintings on the walls. The waitress nervously inquired whether I was enjoying my chicken-fried steak. The cook had mistakenly batter-fried a hunk of bison, and decided to send it out anyway. Even burdened in institutional cream gravy, the meat was noticeably better than generic steer.

Bison provide benefits other than culinary. Range cattle are derided by environmentalists, and not unjustifiably. Domestic cattle in the arid west tend to congregate around creeks, eating streamside vegetation and obliterating wildlife habitat. They require a huge amount of acreage per animal. They graze preferentially on native grasses and forbs, eating them to the ground before moving on. Invasive plants, tumbleweed and star thistle and cheatgrass among them, then colonize the range. Modern range management techniques, such as rotational grazing, attempt to force cattle to move from plot to plot, allowing the land time to recover between grazing. The theory is more or less sound: manage cattle so as to simulate the effect of native grazing animals on the landscape. In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. Rotational grazing requires the range be subdivided with fence to keep cattle out of previously-grazed areas. The fences restrict wildlife movement as well. Rotational grazing advocates disagree over when to move cattle from one tract to another. At its best, the method does little to eliminate damage to streams.

Bison advocates sensibly point out that bison need no special management to mimic bison grazing habits. They move while grazing, they stay out of watercourses after drinking, they require fewer acres per animal than do cattle. Much of the western landscape evolved in the presence of massive herds of bison: it only makes sense that bison could live in that landscape without disrupting it. By buying bison meat and thus supporting bison ranching, one can contribute to a more sustainable use of the western range.

Driving into the paddock, I notice than bison seem easier on the earth than cattle even inside a feedlot’s fences. Despite the presence of large manure-generating animals, the air within the fence smells more of alfalfa than anything else. Byars pilots the F150 across the pen at about twenty miles an hour. The herd follows: the truck means food. Parking at the far end of the pen, Byars exits the cab and walks to the rear, then hops up onto the truckbed. She shoves a third of a bale of alfalfa onto the ground. Losing valuable time, I snap a photo through the rear window. By the time I leave the cab, the bison have nearly caught up to the truck. I climb over the side into the bed, and we are surrounded.

The bison jostle one another for access to the hay. Every so often, a minor squabble erupts, one cow turning on another in a brief flurry of snorts and stamping. Aside from that, the bison eat placidly. For large herd animals with a reputation for fierce temper, these guys seem remarkably tranquil.

Still, there’s no denying their wildness. As a youngster in Buffalo, New York, I more than once found myself drinking beer at night on the banks of the Niagara River, alone and watching the water. The river was dark and quiet, reflecting Canadian porchlights on the far shore, lapping at the breakwall at the terminus of the Erie Canal as it flowed past the abandoned factories on the US side. That dark calm masked terrifying power. Even twenty-two miles above the famous falls, the river was a dangerous strait that demanded caution and respect. That quiet danger was humbling. These bison remind me of the Niagara River, a little.

Except the Niagara rarely made eye contact, rarely stuck its nose over the side of the truck to see what you were up to.

"Their eyesight is really poor," Byars says. "They pretty much have to get that close to get a good look." She reaches to a nearby yearling, who shrinks back. Byars clearly cherishes the animals’ undomesticated temperaments. When I mention the species distinct distaste for human cuddling, she beams. Nonetheless, she can’t help but try to touch her livestock, to communicate with them in distinctly primate fashion. I can’t say as I blame her. I reach out slowly, gently, to scratch an inquisitive nearby nose. The cow starts, lets me scratch for a second, then pulls away. "They like to lick your hands once in a while. I’ve had them wrap their tongues around my hand, and pull it into their mouth. It’s a really good thing they don’t have big teeth in front. If they had teeth like horses, that would have hurt." A yearling sticks her head into the back of the bed, sniffs for more alfalfa, rubs her chin on the corrugated plastic bedliner. We toss small handfuls of hay toward her. She flinches.

The pickup is rocking. A cow has her horns locked under the front bumper, doing isometric neck exercises. A pair of bison argue over access to the passenger side mirror. Another rubs the top of her head on the driver’s side door, making dull tapping sounds with her horns. Bison lean abruptly against the side panels. It suddenly occurs to me how the truck gained its patina of minor dents and scratches. Two calves chase one another in a broad circle around the corral. I estimate their peak speed at just under thirty-five per. At that pace, they look relaxed. One runs in a spring-loaded gait I’ve never before seen outside of cartoons: all four hooves hitting the ground at once, knees bending only slightly. You can almost hear the "boing, boing, boing."

The ranch’s lone bull circles the truck, takes a lusty mouthful or two of alfalfa, surveys his wives and children. He is confident and relaxed. His head is larger than some washing machines. I want to run my fingers through his matted mane. He comes up to Byars, nudges her with apparent affection. Refraining from eye contact, she smiles. The truck keeps rocking. If this was an earthquake, it would be the longest 2.3 on record. "I imagine one of them will hop up into the truck bed at some point," Byars chuckles. It’s a reasonable thought. A full-grown bison can jump six feet from a standing start.

Bison seem to have some general enmity for human vehicles. In the 1870s, according to the late naturalist William T. Hornaday, the massive bison herds of the Plains frequently derailed railway trains. This may have been self-defense. Passengers on the first transcontinental railroads frequently shot bison for amusement. At that time, bison had been split into northern and southern herds, separated by the emigrant trail along the Platte River in Nebraska and Wyoming. Bison attempting to cross the trail faced a miles-wide swath of land denuded by westering domestic livestock. The herds would not see another twenty years. General Phil Sheridan advocated for the species’ extermination so as to deprive the Plains Indians of their "commissary." Less notoriously, a German innovation in leather tanning created a demand for millions of bison hides each year. With buffalo guns such as the Sharps .45 rifle, a "hunter" could kill a hundred animals in a single "stand"; the rest of the herd would go on feeding for some time. Only the skins and tongues were taken. Wolfers, probably the most despised people on the frontier, would taint the corpses with strychnine, returning later to skin the poisoned wolves and coyotes. After bleaching in the sun, the bones were shipped east; millions of pounds of them some years. By 1886, when Hornaday went west to shoot bison for a display at the Smithsonian, there were only a couple thousand left in all of North America. Three years later, there were 1091. Half of them lived in what would become Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta. Another quarter were in private herds. Two hundred lived in Yellowstone. The remainder eked out a risky living, wild and unprotected, on public lands in the US.

That the yearling now licking the bed liner was ever born is due to a sea change in public opinion since the 1890s. Faced with the loss of this most potent of symbols of the North American landscape, early bison enthusiasts - Hornaday among them - successfully campaigned for protection laws. Theodore Roosevelt did his part from his Oval Office bully pulpit. Freed from hunting pressure, bison numbers began to grow, first on private ranches and then on parklands. By the 1980s, sociologists were advocating the restoration of bison to broad swaths of the High Plains, whose human population had dwindled to below 1890’s levels. In some counties, there are again more bison than people.

Though the hay is mostly gone, the bison are still congregated around the truck. Byars slowly swings her legs over the truck’s tail. A cow three feet away raises her head, stares. "Lose interest." Byars speaks, soft and singsong, until the cow returns to sniffling for more alfalfa. Byars’ feet touch soil, and the cow startles again. "Lose interest. Lose interest." Slipping around the side and into the cab, Byars starts the engine. "Go ahead and stay back there: I’ll try not to drive over too many squirrel holes."

As we head for the gate, the calves are at it again. Running in crazy circles, pivoting on their hind feet, their breath steams as the rain starts once more.