A buffalo hunt in the Sand Hills with NFL star John Howell and a Choctaw warrior.
By Gary Lewis
This was an old trail, an ancient crossing over the Dismal River. Just a couple of centuries back, in the soft sand of the Nebraska hills, the tracks were worn so deep the buffalo might rub the sides of their bodies on the walls of the trail.
At times the buffalo walked nose to tail, single file, a long string of animals that might stretch over the horizon. Trails led to water, crossing to favored feeding areas and up to the bluffs where they might bed with noses in the wind.
It was common for herds of bison to attempt crossings when rivers were at flood stage. Many animals drowned when they were swept downriver or were crushed under cave-ins. This, I remembered as we loaded our rifles.
We climbed the ridge on a switchback road, keeping the wheels out of the ruts.
When we spotted a small group of animals silhouetted on the spine of a ridge, we parked the truck out of sight.
From the days of the Cheyenne and the Ogalalla, buffalo hunting has always been a team sport. Today our team included John Howell, a former NFL safety who played for Tampa Bay and Seattle, Tracy Wilson, a former bicycle racer, Tray Ardese, a Choctaw warrior from Oklahoma, Sam Pyke, an award-winning filmmaker and Heath Gunns of Spoken Outdoors.
We walked up through some low hills, studded with cedar trees, populated with a few cottonwoods and pock-marked with buffalo wallows.
In the heat of the summer, buffalo horn the ground, toss dust over their heads and roll to coat themselves in soil for some protection from ticks, fleas and mosquitoes. Maybe a foot deep, sometimes deeper, maybe a dozen feet in diameter, a wallow also provides a bit of cover for a hunter.
Across most of the great plains, the buffalo wallows have been filled in, the plow passing again and again over the high and low points of the soil levels it so that the ground is flattened, but in hills that have never known the plow, a person can still find the ancient wallows and see the paths of the bison. Through the Sand Hills even the roads are built on the buffalo trails because over thousands of years the animals found the best ways to water, food and shelter.
The Old Names
A few names live on in legend: the saviors of the great beasts were men like Samuel Walking Coyote, Charles Allard, Michel Pablo, Buffalo Jones and Charles Goodnight who founded small private herds from orphaned calves. By 1902, the Yellowstone herd was started with 18 bison.
Today there are close to 500,000 bison on the hoof in the US and Canada. Herds in various states and provinces ensure the survivability of the species. Even today a handful of men and women preserve bison on reservations, refuges and ranches.
When his football career was over, Howell went back to his hometown in the Sand Hills, back to the Dismal River. For 25 years, Howell’s bison, close to 200 animals, have had the run of a preserve on the banks of the Dismal. To keep from exceeding the carrying capacity of the land, a few bison are harvested each year.
On the hunt I carried a Marlin Guide Gun chambered for the classic buffalo caliber, the 45-70 Government. While I was along to chronicle the hunt, I was not hunting this time. But the gun was in my hand in case. With this old Marlin, I have taken a couple of my biggest bears, and the rifle has accounted for two bison in Montana.
Bison hunts often take place during the coldest months of the year and I like to wear good gloves that call back the old days. I have two pairs I call on for a bison hunt. These gauntlets come from Sullivan Glove Company. You wear a gauntlet when you need to keep dirt or snow out of the cuffs of your coat. You wear a gauntlet when you work with ropes. One pair is made of deer hide and fringed. The other pair is made of buffalo. Sullivan Glove Company also makes gauntlets out of elk hide. You can find them here: https://sullivanglove.com/collections/rodeo-ranch
Buffalo Wallows
On our third stalk we identified a large bull on the edge of the herd. Ahead of me, Tracy Wilson and Howell sprawled on the rim of a buffalo wallow and Wilson made a rest for the rifle out of a backpack. The wind now at 25 miles per hour. The distance to the big bull, 125 yards. The animals were close. When a calf cleared the bull, the animal turned and gave Wilson the shot he needed.
In the wind, the sound of the rifle was like a hand clap. We stood up and walked toward the milling herd. A zephyr blew my hat off.
Buffalo pay their way on the ranch. For most of the year they are left alone, but in the winter when the coats are rich, when the meat can be harvested without spoilage, Howell guides a few hunters in the chase and the stalk.
Knelt down in the sandy soil next to a bison, before the good hard work begins, one cannot help but to run fingers through the rich wool. Silky soft. There is no finer robe than one taken in February or March.
At once a person marvels at the great store of meat, the uses of hide and the fiber, and on the hoof, its superior fitness for the plains.
The Lakota called it tatanka. To the Shoshone, it was bozheena. The Blackfeet called it real food.
For a few minutes we admired the animal that lay before us.
In the morning we returned with the Choctaw warrior on his first bison hunt. Tray Ardese grew up in Oklahoma, spent 25 years in the Marine Corps. This veteran of seven combat tours said his lifelong dream was to harvest a bison.
“I’ve known I was going to hunt buffalo all my life,” Ardese said. “I grew up in Oklahoma and Oklahoma literally means land red. My grandparents lived in Buffalo Valley near a place called Yanush, which means buffalo in Choctaw.”
His dream took shape on a frosty morning in the Sand Hills.
We crossed the Dismal and found a herd on a bench between groves of cedars.
On hands and knees and sometimes with our shirt buttons in the sand, we slithered through coarse grass and prickly pear, down into the shade of a cedar. Several stalks showed glimpses of young bulls and dry cows, but with no shot opportunities where the target animal was not screened away by a calf.
When 58 pairs of eyes turned on four two-leggers, they bunched up, milled around and lined out for the horizon.
Two hours later we stalked the herd again, down through a narrow canyon. On our bellies in a buffalo wallow, we eased up to the rim and watched the last of the herd file by, further and faster than we wanted for a good shot.
We were yet at the back of the herd and no good shot could be made. Howell motioned with a tilt of his head and we climbed out. The herd was on alert. We had taken two animals in the last two days and the animals were prone to run.
After the animals passed, we climbed up to a patch of cedars and cottonwoods. The bison began to stream uphill along an ancient trail.
Ardese bolted a round into the chamber and cocked an ear to his guide. Howell called the play.
“That one, at the back of the herd, it doesn’t have a calf. That one.” And the crack of the rifle was in the wind and one animal lifted its tail and made its final run.
DISMAL RIVER CLUB
https://dismalriver.com/-big-game
OUTFITTER JOHN HOWELL
john@dismalriver.com
FRONT STREET COWBOY MUSEUM
Ogalalla, NE
308-284-6000
https://frontstreetcowboymuseum.com
ASH HOLLOW STATE HISTORICAL PARK
http://outdoornebraska.gov/ashhollow/
SPOKEN OUTDOORS
SULLIVAN GLOVE
https://sullivanglove.com/collections/rodeo-ranch
