Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land

by Dan O'Brien

Jill and I were starved for cash, but we knew that simply selling our buffalo production would have made us undistinguishable from generations of livestock producers who had exploited the plains. I had seen the wild fear in the eyes of buffalo as they smell a slaughter plant for the first time. I had watched them standing in their own manure, being forced to eat subsidized grain products. Neither Jill nor I wanted anything to do with forcing buffalo through the cattle production model. Because most buffalo producers come from cattle traditions, they instinctually do what they have done for generations. But buffalo are not cattle. They are evolutionary marvels that have existed for tens of thousands of years with no aid from humans. It is inhumane and wrongheaded to treat them as if they have been selected to endure the stresses of confinement. But it is not the death of buffalo that bothers me. Death is an unalterable fact for all of us. The only choice we have is how it comes.