What to Watch When Herding Buffalo

Close-up of buffalo in a squeeze chute. (Owen Preece for HCN)

High Country News ran this article last March on the work of the "head bison wrangler" at the American Prairie Project in eastern Montana, Pedro Calderon Dominguez: "The Art of Moving a Buffalo."

At American Prairie, Calderon-Dominguez works with about 900 bison, divided into two herds. Each herd grazes at least 25,000 acres. The bison are wild animals, but not, legally, wildlife. Montana classifies them as livestock, and they graze land leased from the Bureau of Land Management for that purpose.

Like any big project in the West, it's not without controversy:

A few months after Calderon-Dominguez moved to Montana, the BLM permitted American Prairie to graze bison on six allotments in Phillips County. The state’s governor and attorney general both petitioned the decision, arguing that public rangelands should be for commercial agriculture. Their protests were denied by the Interior Board of Land Appeals in October 2023, and again on appeal last May.

Calderon-Dominguez tries to reduce the tension by keeping bison off neighboring property. Ranchers have his cellphone number to call if they see open gates, broken fences or off-premise bison, and American Prairie offers compensation for bison-related damage. So far, the group said, no one has ever requested it.

The owner of a now-gone buffalo ranch near me used to say that they could not be herded like cattle. No dogs. No "Yee-haw" wranglers on horseback.  When he wanted to move his herd to a different pasture, he laid a trail of hay through an open gate and just waited. 

Calderon is somewhat similar in approach: 

Moving them anywhere takes patience. When Calderon-Dominguez needs a herd to change directions, for example, he gets close on his ATV. (He said he’d rather ride a horse but cannot do so for insurance reasons.) It’s enough to pressure the bison to move without agitating them. He always watches their body language carefully.

“The way they move an ear, the eye is going to follow. Then the nose is going to follow and then the feet,” said Calderon-Dominguez. “You’re observing that all the time across the whole group of animals.”

When the herd turns in the right direction, Calderon-Dominguez drives away. Knowing when to release the pressure, he explained, is as important as knowing when to apply it.