Everyone who visits the ranch here asks about the flock of turkeys they encounter. “Are these wild turkeys? Do you raise them? Have you picked one out for Thanksgiving? Christmas?” And I respond, “yes, no, no, no.” “But how can they be wild? You just walk through them, almost close enough to grab.” “That’s true,” I say, “maybe ‘wild’ is a relative term. I don’t feed them. They roost every night in the cottonwood trees. I try not to let dogs chase them. They apparently feel safe here, but I know the coyotes picked off a few poults early in the summer and not every hen raised a brood.” “But aren’t they kind of a pest and messy?” “Well, I’ve never run the risk of stepping on one; although I have stepped on a few of their leavings, but this is a ranch, and who on a ranch has not stepped into something unpleasant on a daily basis? I like their company, obviously not for conversation, but they serve as a kind of conversation piece, like the rabbits that raise their young in the shrubbery around the house. They let me read something about the spring-fed woody draw behind the house, the habitat that feeds and harbors them, protects them from natural hazards and reveals their ability to adapt. For that matter deer and coyotes also inhabit that wooded draw along with an array of song and passerine birds, and raptors, none of which I bother. Predators and prey. How can one top that?”
Out of the window on my left is the sunrise, and most mornings I am there to witness it. Usually I’m walking toward it to grain the horses, but then sometimes I’m at my desk writing, often recording what has been going on or what is taking place on the ranch. There is always planning ahead for the next day or week. Sometimes plans are roughed out months in advance; sometimes plans change with a flash of lightning or a ruined tractor tire, but mostly plans become refined, put into action and completed.
So after months of planning we are well underway on a major fencing project:
removing old fencing and putting in new along newly surveyed lines. The new re-shapes the available pasture for buffalo. Removing the old opens the ground. Much of the removal is of interior or cross fencing designed for a cattle ranching operation. There were calving pastures and heifer pastures, and cow/calf pastures and bull pastures, and within each one was a fenced area for hay storage, a stackyard. For buffalo all that has to go. Perimeter fencing is our main goal with an absolute minimum of cross fencing. We want the pastures to be as close to “freerange” as the land holdings and geography will allow.
Free ranging with buffalo is critical to the operation of this ranch. We do not operate the ranch on a cattle model. We do not segregate the bullls from the herd, nor do we sort the calves off to take them to the sale barn. We keep the herd intact in an attempt to replicate what once was and to retain the exceptionally strong herd bonding that they have. To remove that would be to diminish the American Bison to something other than what it is, an animal that co-evolved with the land and that survives by its herd instinct, that survives all weather hardships as well, and preserves its wildness, its grace and beauty.
As a herd, it often moves from place to place within a pasture at its ground pounding, distance eating, undulating lope. It can do so for miles. We try to give it miles in which to do so. In many respects the Great Plains is now a quilt work of small plains, we strive to open them back up if for no other reason than to give the buffalo room to roam at its slow undulating lope without running into a cross fence.