Crazy week. Spent part of it in South Dakota, visiting trade schools and telling the incredible story of Build Dakota, a scholarship program similar to mikeroweWORKS that’s assisted nearly 3,500 kids with over $43 million dollars. I’ll tell you more about that later, and about how South Dakota is leading the country in the race to reinvigorate the skilled trades. For now, I just want to share some video from a ride-along I did on my way back to the airport. As it happens, the annual Buffalo Round-Up took place yesterday in Custer State Park – another one of things I’d always wanted to see. Well, I finally saw it, and all I can say is holy crap!
Thirteen hundred buffalo who preferred not to be relocated, versus a couple dozen expert cowboys and cowgirls determined to get them out of the hills, into a valley, and through a narrow gate that led into a large corral. Assisting the riders were half-a-dozen F-150’s driven by park employees – one of which I was allowed to occupy. So much fun. Thousands of people showed up on a gorgeous morning to see what could possibly go wrong, and marvel at the sight of a buffalo herd on the move. The people lined the ridges above the valley, and watched for a few hours as the buffalo stampeded and the horses galloped and the riders cracked their whips and the trucks accelerated over the wild and rocky terrain, trying to keep the herd headed in the right direction.
My driver, Cory, told me to buckle up and hang on.
“You got one job, Mike. Keep an eye out for big rocks hidden in the grass. They’re all over the place. Last year, a driver hit one and snapped the chassis in two. Had a Senator on board. Not good.”
Perhaps if I hadn’t been on the lookout for rocks, the attached video would look more professional, but it should give you an idea of what’s it looks like to chase a herd of buffalo in a pickup truck. In short, it’s a blast, but it’s also a bit unsettling. As we sped over the plains and over a massive prairie dog town, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the buffalo suddenly all decided, together, to resist our best efforts to push them into a place they didn’t wish to enter. In other words, what would we do if the herd stopped acting like a herd, and realized that they were in fact, the superior force? Probably something similar to what happens when bipeds grow weary of being pushed in directions they don’t wish to go.
I was about to share that philosophical observation with the other passengers in the pickup, when Cory ran over a large rock that I had neglected to spot.
“Rock!” I yelled, a second too late.
“Thanks,” said Cory, as his head bounced off the ceiling.
Moments later, Cory’s walkie-talkie exploded with an urgent alert.
“Rider down! Rider down.”
Someone one the other side of the herd, hopefully not in the middle of the herd, was on the ground, and there was nothing we could do. A couple of EMT’s in a Razor were quickly dispatched to render assistance. I’m not sure what happened, but given the many thousands of prairie dog holes all over the sprawling landscape, I was worried for the horse as well as the rider. Herding buffalo on horseback is dangerous, and as I as tried to focus from keeping Cory from hitting anymore big rocks at high speeds, I couldn’t help but consider the business of hunting buffalo 200 years ago on this very land.
Back then, at the beginning of the 19th century, there were something like 50 million buffalo in North America. They say the herds stretched for miles in every direction and moved like a massive wave over the prairie. To be a Dakota Sioux back then, riding a horse without a saddle into a vast herd of stampeding buffalo with nothing but a bow and arrow was amazing enough. To somehow bring one down and then live to tell the tale is mind-boggling. But maybe not as mind-boggling as what we did to the buffalo population in the decades that followed. That was nothing short of genocide, just as bringing them back from the brink of extinction was nothing short of a miracle.
“Rock!” I yelled.
Cory swerved to the left just in time, and then accelerated as a dozen animals broke away from the herd and tried to bolt back up the hill. I couldn’t help but notice they crapped as they ran – a lot. So much so, it made me wonder about the sheer volume of turds that 50 million buffalo would have produced two hundred years ago. (After 20 years of Dirty Jobs, my brain is still wired to ponder the impact of feces from every species.) Yesterday, the buffalo poop was literally everywhere. It was impossible not to walk in, ride over, or drive through. The tread on our tires was packed with scat, and that’s just from chasing down 1,300 of them. What would the poop from 50 million of these things look like? It must have been a foot deep for miles in every direction. And what would the impact of all that poop be on the early pioneers used to travel these same plains? How did their wagon wheels get any traction in all that dung?
“Rock!” I yelled, again, just in the nick of time.
The mind wanders when you’re riding shotgun in a buffalo chase vehicle, even when you only have one job to do. But if you ever have the chance to ride along on a round up like this one, do it. The sight will stick with you, even as you find yourself pondering the history of our great country, the impact of feces from every species, and the great good fortune of those lucky Dakotans who make their home here today.
A home, where the buffalo roam.
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