Cooperation breaks out during bison hunt

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

An odd thing has been happening in Montana's controversial bison hunt: cooperation has broken out.

Last Saturday, 12-year-old Wesley King, of Bozeman, became the youngest person to kill a bison in Montana's newly reborn bison hunt.

The animal didn't die immediately, but King and his family stayed on the job, following the wounded bull for nearly three miles before Wesley put it down for good.

That's when the hard work started: the skinning, the field dressing and hauling of hundreds of pounds of meat.

But that's also when some members of the protest group Buffalo Field Campaign pitched in to help.

Things had been a little tense prior to that, according to BFC members and Wesley's parents, Kelly and Ward King. The family had been pursuing a wounded animal, but several people with walkie talkies and video cameras followed them every step of the way. There was one brief verbal confrontation.

But an icebreaker arrived in the form of a BFC volunteer who identified himself as Canyon, Kelly King said. He told her he was half Irish and half Native American.

He performed a prayer ceremony over the dead bison. The prayer helped.

"That put a whole different light on the situation," she said. "Everything was calm after that."

Two members of BFC then helped skin the animal, she said, and one of them helped draw a blood sample for brucellosis testing.

Bison sometimes gather around fallen animals and try to make them rise. They butt heads and act surly, creating a potentially dangerous situation. Before the field dressing began, a couple BFC members helped chase the live bison away.

Once the field dressing was complete, the man called Canyon helped the King family haul meat on a sled while explaining Native American traditions, Kelly King said

She offered one of the BFC members some meat, but he said he couldn't accept it, she said, because he was moving to Alaska.

Accepting meat and helping with the harvest is a matter of individual choice, said Mike Mease, one of BFC's founders.

He said his personal opinion is that bison hunters should be prepared to do all the work themselves and be ready to haze animals that are "mourning" the fallen.

"But we're not dictators," he said.

George Nell, a BFC volunteer in Gardiner, said he sees no contradiction if volunteers help the hunters or accept a gift of bison meat, while the group complains loudly about the hunt.

"I don't see it as anything tainted," he said. "I see it as a nice peace offering."

BFC also sells hunters, for $5, video copies of each hunt it records. Most hunters have put in their orders, Mease said.

The cooperation is a turnaround from the bison hunts of the 1980s, when protesters got in the faces of hunters, sometimes standing between them and their prey. There was lots of acrimony and a few arrests.

So far in this hunt, that hasn't been the case. BFC has stuck to documenting the hunt with cameras.

"They said they would document it and that's what they're doing," said Mel Frost, information officer for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "They're even helping."

At least one other hunter told her BFC members had helped him process his bison, she said.

BFC remains critical of the hunt. It issued a press release on Monday, calling it a "canned hunt" and said hunters are "being used to do the (Montana Department of Livestock's) dirty work of ridding the landscape of wild buffalo."

BFC's position is to oppose a hunt until Montana agrees to grant bison some habitat outside of Yellowstone National Park and respect them like other wildlife.

That doesn't mean acrimony for individual hunters, Mease said.

"We don't have any grudge with these hunters," he said. "It's not a personal vendetta."

"We're trying to make friends and dispel myths," Nell said.

Kelly King said she appreciated the help.

"It was a very pleasant ending to a rough day," she said.

Hunters have killed 14 bull bison since the new season opened Nov. 15.

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