March 2011 River Ranch Diary

I may be wrong here, but real winter seems to have come late this year. Autumn ran late and mid-winter seemed extraordinarily warm. The first real cold period came in late January and mid-February, and the first major snow fell after the middle of February, and we have now had three consecutive, relatively substantial snowfalls. Typically March is our snowiest month. That is yet to be seen. I am not complaining, and I realize that much of this nation has been subjected to some other than ordinary winter occurrences.

Frankly I like the seasons to be distinct, and you can count on South Dakota to give you that. This year we have some deep, dry, light, fluffy snow with cold temperatures; so moving around the ranch doing chores has not been too tough. Time consuming sometimes but not really difficult.

The majority of the herd is wintering on the Indian Creek and Big Corral Draw grazing allotment. The buffalo come to the river occasionally; they cross the ice and hang around the gate that separates the private land of the ranch from the government land of the grazing allotment, which, buy the way, U. S. senator Tim Johnson has proposed to become designated as the Indian Creek National Grasslands Wilderness Area.

Again I may be wrong about this, but I think the buffalo come across the river and to the gate at this time of the year because our pastures include some ravines and wooded draws where the cows like to have their calves. We prefer to bring the buffalo into the private ground before they begin calving. A buffalo cow with a new calf tends not to be as easy going as she had been; so we like to bring them in a little before the USFS mandate requires and the let them alone.

I tend to believe that the buffalo, regarding the calving season, behave somewhat traditionally. Of course to prove that idea I would have to undertake a more scientific approach then just my observation. That approach would require me to ensure that the same cow returned to the same place year after year to have her calf. I choose not to do that because, given the nature of the buffalo cow in childbirth, that kind of observation seems too intrusive and contradictory to the philosophy of “let them alone.” It is easy enough to observe them when the cow and her nursery entourage return to the main herd to introduce their new calves.

Somehow, at this moment, a line from a poem, “Ode to the West Wind,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley comes to mind. “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Let’s just say, I’m waiting for the calves.