By Harriet Brown
Each year in December, the Ho-Chunk Nation holds a two-day roundup and weigh-in on its Muscoda bison ranch. In its elements of chase and capture, its visceral sights and sounds and smells, and its physical and spiritual connections with the animal that has been so important to the Ho-Chunk for so long, the bison roundup honors the past and offers hope for the future.
In the front parlor of an old farmhouse, Cecil Garvin is sitting at a table, making prodigious use of the ashtray in front of him. About a dozen folks are scattered around the room, an eclectic group of men and women, elders and teens, Native and non-Native people.
Garvin is the project manager for the Ho-Chunk Bison Ranch, a big man with lightly pocked skin and dark hair parted on one side. He knocks a column of ash off the end of his smoke and checks his watch. Richard Snake sits beside him, a slender man with high cheekbones and a laugh that lights up everyone within earshot.
Deep in a beat-up chair, a balding man with pale eyes, a fringe of white hair and a baseball cap smiles at no one in particular. For 30 years, Frank Shadewald farmed corn and soybeans on this land, which his grandparents bought around 1900. In 1994, he sold it to the Ho-Chunk, but he still spends a lot of time here. “They’ve been kind enough to let me come back,” he says with a grin.
While we wait for more crew to arrive, Garvin tells me that the Ho-Chunk are one of 57 tribes around the country that raise bison. They’ve got about 120 bison on 640 acres. “We raise buffalo naturally, with respect for the animal,” Garvin explains. “We leave them as a herd. We don’t dehorn, castrate, give steroids or antibiotics, or use commercial feed.”
By tomorrow night, Garvin and Snake will know how many bulls and cows have survived another year, how many new calves were born, how much each animal weighs, and the overall health of the herd. But the big question is whether the herd’s lead bull, Kunu, is still alive -- and what he weighs. “He could get up to 2,000 pounds this year,” Snake says.
Garvin checks his watch again and stands, his muddy boots incongruous on the mustard-colored shag carpet. People begin shrugging into jackets, pulling on hats and gloves, and heading outside. The roundup is about to begin.
The great bison herds of the past roamed the open spaces of the Great Plains -- Kansas, Nebraska, Texas. But bison lived in Wisconsin, too. In 1766, an Englishman named Jonathan Carver wrote of seeing herds near the lower Chippewa River. “The buffeloe . . . are very plenty,” he wrote. “Could see them at a distance under the shady oaks like cattle in a pasture and sometimes a drove of an hundred or more shading themselves in these groves at noon day. . . .” Early French and English travelers told of large numbers of bison along the state’s western edge, from present-day Polk County to the Iowa border.
Fifty-four years later, explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft came through the Wisconsin River valley and reported that “the elk and the buffalo, have been driven off many years ago.” And by the end of the 19th century there were fewer than 1,000 bison left in America.
The Ho-Chunk started the bison ranch in 1994 with four animals: three cows bought from the Crow people in Montana, and a bull from Illinois dubbed Kunu, a name usually given to a first-born male. One of the Ho-Chunk’s goals was to produce bison meat-- which has less fat and cholesterol than beef -- for their elders, many of whom suffer from diabetes.
But while raising bison might be pragmatic, it also serves as a kind of spiritual or cultural touchstone. A re-envisioning, if you will, of a traditional way of life that is in large part gone forever. A new direction for the Ho-Chunk in the 21st century.
I follow the line of pickups and tractors leading from the ranch house to a fenced-in pasture and park as far away as possible. Garvin warned me that bison can easily jump an 8-foot-high fence. I’m pretty sure my car insurance doesn’t cover bison damage.
The animals mill nervously at one end of the pasture. The goal this morning is to herd them into an elaborate series of narrow corridors, or chutes. Tomorrow they’ll be run through the chutes to the scale, where they’ll be weighed and vaccinated, implanted with microchips or have theirs scanned, and be released.
The volunteers climb into their roundup vehicles: several pickups, a couple of small tractors, a van, and a truck with a snowplow on the front. The Ho-Chunk don’t use horses for the roundup because horses and bison are scared of one another. “Buffalo form a defense circle as soon as they see horses coming,” Garvin explains.
My husband (who’s photographing the event) and I will be riding in the back of Frank Shadewald’s pickup. As we climb in, Garvin leaps into a white truck and takes off, driving straight into the herd. He pulls up short and screeches into reverse. The bison leap apart, churning up dust and dry brown grass. Up and back goes the pickup, tacking across the field like a mad sailboat. Garvin blares his horn and the herd circles like a brown cloud with legs, walleyed with panic. They’re top-heavy creatures, all head and hump, with wickedly curving horns. They swerve and gallop around Shadewald’s truck. The screeching and honking seems to be having a contrary effect; the bison head the wrong way, away from the enclosure and the chutes. Garvin takes off after them, adding shouts to the rising cacophony. It’s like a dance with a tornado.
After an hour, everyone’s back where they started. But the standoff doesn’t last. As the chase resumes, one animal breaks off from the rest. Shadewald maneuvers our pickup, heading it off. By 10 a.m. the more docile half of the herd has been shepherded into the enclosure. The wilier ones stand at the far end of the pasture, pawing the frozen grass.
When the vehicles converge on them again, the bison explode around us. I remember with some anxiety Shadewald telling us earlier that bison sometimes leap into the back of a truck. They are so large, and we are so exposed in the back of the pickup. But it’s also exhilarating to be so close to such aliveness, such power. I understand why people look forward to the roundup all year long.
Besides, this is a game of endurance and cunning. The herders are enjoying themselves, leaning on their horns, whooping and waving. Shadewald gets out of the pickup to stretch while Garvin regroups. “They could probably quiet them and walk them in,” says Shadewald thoughtfully. And that, apparently, is the new plan. We make a wall of vehicles, and Garvin drives the herd toward us—no fireworks, just a slow, quiet coming on.
It works—but not for long. Soon Garvin is blasting the horn again and the animals are racing in a circle. Over and over they make their way down the pasture, get tantalizingly close to the entrance to the chutes, and then bolt.
Now a line of vehicles extends across the pasture, cutting off the animals’ escape route. We’re the last in line, nearest to the fence. Behind us a section of white tarp flaps in the wind, smeared with mud and what looks like blood. Garvin works the line, slinging a tarp across an open door at the back of a van so the bison see it as a solid surface rather than the flimsy wall of human will and scrappy vehicles assembled here.
As Garvin gives the signal, Snake advances, banging on an empty pretzel tin. Another guy on a tractor edges forward. Garvin waves his hat. All three are yelling, “Get in there, come on, get over there.” The bison zigzag like a school of panicked fish. Most run toward the chutes, but about a third split off and race toward the men. Shadewald rolls up his window in a hurry. “False sense of security,” he says with a laugh.
Soon just 40 or so are left. A bull, cow, and calf glare at us, as if we’re personally responsible for their predicament. Again the human line advances, arms waving, and then, just like that, the rest of the creatures turn and gallop down the chute. The roundup is done. And it’s only 11:30 a.m.
“Last year it took till about 10 o’clock at night,” says Garvin. He seems both relieved and disappointed that it’s over so soon.
Dec. 8
A gray, chilly morning. I’m standing next to Garvin on a makeshift scaffolding that overlooks the chutes, a series of plywood-and-metal-walled corridors and gates. Garvin calls directions through a bullhorn to the volunteers who stand on cinder blocks, chairs, and railings along the chutes, most of them men, many armed with cattle prods.
The object today is to keep the bison moving along the chutes, through a series of gates and holding areas, and up to the scale. They press themselves together in twos and threes, hoof-deep in mud—a sea of brown furry backs. A tractor with plywood planks mounted on the front “pushes” the bison through, encouraging them to move forward without actually touching them. The guys lining the sides whip coils of rope into the metal sides, yipping “Yi! Yi! Yi!” like -- well, cowboys.
The animals move reluctantly. A few lie down on the muddy ground, making low, snuffling sounds, a prehistoric growl of distress. That’s the signal for the volunteers to poke them with cattle prods, yelling insults and banging the sides of the chute. Jon Langsdorf, who comes down to help every year from the Mackenzie Environmental Education Center in Poynette, nudges a calf as a woman beside him says, “You look fine. Now get your buffalo butt up.”
Langsdorf explains the seemingly harsh treatment: “If they go down, the others step on them and they die.” Bison need a lot of room; the stress of being chased around the pasture and crowded into the chutes always puts them at risk. This year’s unseasonably warm temperature -- between 30 and 40 degrees -- will make them vulnerable to overheating, too, since they already have their winter fur. And then about 90 animals are newly arrived from the South Dakota Badlands, part of an ongoing trade that helps maintain genetic diversity; the Ho-Chunk will ship six heifers back to South Dakota later this week.
Last year the Ho-Chunk lost only two during roundup; six or seven have already died today, probably from dehydration and stress. The dead animals are hauled out to the field beyond the chutes, where a couple of young girls prod them with their shoes and run away, giggling and shrieking. The dead animals are bloated, with clumps of fur missing, their necks bent at impossible angles. A tractor drones slowly across the field, bearing one dead bison at a time back toward the ranch house for butchering.
In a holding pen behind the scaffold, a calf lies on its belly, its legs folded, its head drooping. Garvin tells me it may have been trampled. “We can’t do anything about it,” he says. There is no babying, no coddling of sick ones. The strong survive; the weak do not. It’s the way of the natural world.
The bison do not go quietly through the last series of chutes; they catapult through them, banging and rattling and slamming themselves into the walls, their hoofs dancing in the gap between the bottom of the stall and the muddy ground, snorting their terror and rage. As each animal reaches the end of the chutes, it erupts into the tight confinement of the scale enclosure. Midmorning, I watch a bull try to buck its way out, smashing its hoofs over and over into the metal walls, whipping its head from side to side. The volunteer at the scale -- of necessity a big man -- throws his weight onto a lever at just the right moment, closing two pieces of metal around the bull’s neck to contain its head. It’s a feat that requires both dexterity and brute strength -- something like lassoing Niagara Falls.
Quickly, the hired veterinarian, Clay Dean, opens a side panel and injects pinkeye vaccine and de-wormer. The handful of men on either side work the squeeze chute, pulling the sides of the enclosure together until the bison’s hoofs are just off the ground. This one weighs in at 935 pounds -- a mere midsize model. The real leviathans have yet to come through.
Now Snake opens the gate at the front of the scale. This unprepossessing man has a gift for dealing with animals. He lays his hand on the great shaggy head, and -- as I watch happen over and over throughout the day -- the bison quiets, at least for a few seconds. That’s long enough for Snake to inject a microchip and clamp on an ear tag with a device like a giant hole punch. Snake calls out “three” -- a guess as to the bull’s age, based on the size of its horns -- and steps aside, releasing the front gate. The bull bursts out of the chute with a surging leap, gallops down a corridor, and disappears into the pasture.
There’s no time to relax; the next animal is already banging its way down the last chute. On and on through the morning, the process continues: load, position, squeeze, weigh, give shots, scan, tag, release. When all goes well the whole thing takes under a minute.
A couple hundred years ago, the Ho-Chunk -- then known as the Winnebago -- often took part in communal bison hunts with the Menominee people, traveling by canoe down the Rock and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi, putting up temporary tepees on the plain during the hunt. A traditional buffalo feast included an offering of tobacco, songs, and a dance involving a plate of maple sugar -- one of the bison’s favorite foods -- and a dish of wild rice.
This annual roundup and weigh-in has its own traditions. About 10:30, a couple of Ho-Chunk women come down from the ranch house with big pans of food. They set up a picnic-table buffet alongside an enormous coffee urn. Snake takes a quick break, sipping coffee one-handed. His other hand is swollen, but he manages to work a glove over it. “Horn,” he says succinctly.
Up on the scaffolding, Paula Ward, who works in the Ho-Chunk’s executive building in Black River Falls, watches the action with her 13-year-old son. “We always come down for the roundup,” she says. A man who’s brought 10 kids down from Black River Falls tells me, “I’m glad we have the ranch. It’s a great thing for the future.”
By noon about 60 bison are through the chute. But the big question still remains: Where’s Kunu, and how much will he weigh? The biggest bulls are all together and will be the last to come through today. Including Kunu, if he’s still alive and healthy. If he hasn’t lost his muscle and heart over the course of the year.
Garvin stands on the scaffolding in a light drizzle, scanning the chutes, watching for problems. Shadewald’s here today, too, working a gate near the scale. One particularly wild bull leaps up and rips the screening right off the top of the chute. “Don’t be playing with the screen now,” calls Garvin through his bullhorn, and everyone laughs. The rhythm picks up. Squeeze, tag, record, release. A bull comes through with the tip of one horn broken and slick with blood. A shake of its huge head, and Snake is spattered with blood, as are the guys working the scale gate. Snake doesn’t even break stride.
A frisson runs through the crowd. “The big ones are coming,” Snake tells me, grinning and wiping his glasses.
The calf that’s been in the holding pen is now prodded up, around, and through the scale. He weighs in at 193 pounds, a mere slip of a thing. He’s still in the scale when Garvin releases the gate that holds back the last group. The sound of their hoofs and their dense bodies ricocheting off the chute walls is like a rapidly approaching earthquake. The little calf starts to panic. Snake puts one hand on its head, and the calf calms down. I say, “You really have a way with them.”
“Half of ’em had his kids,” says a man in brown overalls, and guffaws at his own joke.
The volunteers on the scale widen the sides of the squeeze chute. “Ready to rock ’n’ roll?” a man calls. “Lock and load is more like it!” yells another.
The first of the big boys is a 6-year-old bull from South Dakota, who weighs in at well over a thousand pounds. As each huge bison explodes into the scale, it’s greeted with cries of delight and surprise. Everyone wants the numbers to go higher and higher, to see just how big these creatures can get. People bet good-naturedly: 1,200 pounds. 1,350. 1,176. Most are known by number; only Kunu has a name. “We’ve got three really big ones,” Garvin tells me with relish. “No. 112, No. 60, and Kunu.”
Finally, around 3:30 p.m., a shout goes up: Kunu is in the chute. A crowd watches the great Kunu ram himself into the scale like a tidal wave, all meat and bone and muscle. His hoofs ring against the metal gate and his great head, with its broken warrior’s horns, is twice the size of the others’, incredibly broad and blunt. A hammer of a head.
For a moment it seems that Kunu won’t fit into the squeeze chute. But slowly the volunteers press their levers down, their faces red. Slowly the sides of the scale come together. Kunu’s feet lift off the ground, and a voice calls out the magic number: 1,965.
A ripple of disappointment passes through the crowd, but it doesn’t last. Kunu may have missed the one-ton mark, but he is still a sight to behold. And he is still the pride of the herd. The leader of the pack.
His release, alas, is something of an anticlimax. He can barely get out of the chute; instead of leaping gracefully away, he waddles down the alley, his sides bulging like a pregnant cow’s.
Still, there’s a sense of closure to Kunu’s passage, as if he were more symbol than animal. Something feral and huge, from a time before treaties and removals, when the great herds moved like clouds across an infinite land.
Epilogue: After a 10-year reign as leader of the herd, Kunu was deposed by a new alpha bull named Hena, which means “second son.” Hena currently weighs in at 2,018 pounds. Kunu died a year later.
Harriet Brown is editor of Wisconsin Trails.