Email
PrintFair Chase or Fiasco?
Photo by Mark Gocke
(page 1 of 2)
It’s 7:00 a.m. on September 15, 2007, the first day of the new bison hunt. Johnie Filbeck drives his pickup down the east side of the National Elk Refuge looking for “Old Lonesome,” a massive bull Filbeck often sees on a ridgetop near Forest Service land. September is a little early for bison to show up in this part of Jackson Hole, but a handful of hunters appeared at sunrise hoping to shoot animals drifting south ahead of the rest of the herd.
Occasionally, Filbeck stops the truck and uses binoculars to scan a dark spot off in the distance. It’s always a bush; there’s not a bison in sight.
As proprietor of the You Bag ’Em, We’ll Drag ’Em game-retrieval company, Filbeck and his partners help hunters get their kills off the refuge and to a butchering and packing facility. The new bison hunt, with the goal of harvesting three hundred animals, means good business.
Killing those three hundred bison is the start of a plan that, wildlife managers say, will help restore thousands of acres of habitat. Yearly hunts would eventually cull the Jackson bison herd down from around twelve hundred to five hundred animals. Those twelve hundred bison, plus roughly five thousand elk, have eaten nearly every form of plant life down to a nub on the 25,000-acre refuge, which is now largely void of trees and shrubs. Sagebrush in Grand Teton National Park has suffered, too.
In winter, bison also wreak havoc on elk feedlines. They bully the smaller ungulates away from rows of alfalfa pellets spread on the ground for them by refuge staff. Since each bison eats about two and a half times as much as an elk, and because the bison aren’t invited guests on the feedlines in the first place, wildlife managers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Elk Refuge say culling the herd is the only realistic option.
Some conservation groups point out that without feedlines, the problem likely wouldn’t have come about in the first place. Jackson Hole’s harsh winters kept bison numbers small before the animals discovered extra food on the refuge. Further, the crowded conditions exacerbate the spread of brucellosis, a disease now affecting a sizable portion of both the elk and bison herds.
Others maintain that the hunt is cruel. The bison have migrated down to the refuge feedlines for twenty-seven years with little reason to fear humans. Up in the national park, members of this herd, with nearly total indifference, tolerate SUVs full of camera-toting tourists. A hunter, some animal-rights activists say, could likely walk into a field of bison and shoot an animal from twenty yards away as it stands there chewing grass, and so shooting a bison here is like shooting a couch: no chase, no fuss.
For Filbeck, the hunt makes sense. People have a right to use this land, he says, and once the herd gets culled, the land will start to recover. He started his business in 1970, charging hunters $20 to haul elk off the refuge. “For quite a few years I was called ‘Twenty-dollar John,’” he says. “Now I just charge for how much work I do.”
Filbeck calls out to some bison hunters milling about a refuge parking lot: “Get a big un’, I charge more for big ones.”
Soon, Evanston resident and father of five Ryan Case pulls up in a blue pickup truck with his wife Devona, three of four young sons (the eldest is away at a Boy Scout function), and seven-month-old daughter Talia.
Among the hunters in the parking lot, Case is the only one with a bull tag, so there’s considerable excitement when a male is spotted up on a hilltop close to where Filbeck was scouting earlier. It’s not Old Lonesome, but it’s a big buffalo nonetheless.
A caravan of hunters, wildlife managers, and You Bag ’Em, We’ll Drag ’Em personnel follow Case as he drives about a mile up the road in his pickup. After stopping, he passes out hunter-orange clothing to each family member, grabs his rifle, and along with his family troops off through a creek bottom and up the hill toward the bull.
About half an hour later, we see the buffalo running toward us at full speed with Case, rifle slung across his shoulder, in pursuit. Case heads up a small hill overlooking the creek to a vantage point that should put him right over the bull. With their dad hot on the trail of a bison, nine-year-old Logan and seven-year-old Jacob strike out for the hill, hoping to get a glimpse of the hunt, while mom, baby Talia, and five-year-old Ryker bring up the rear.
The bull emerges about a half mile away and we hear six gunshots spread out over about a minute. Soon, the bull sinks down out of sight. Case emerges from the woods and, after throwing a few rocks at the bison to make sure it’s not still alive, collapses to the ground. Hanging his head between his knees, he’s obviously exhausted, having chased the bull for well over a mile.
