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Wow.. they even provide links on how to get a license, outfitters, and bison recipes...
American Buffalo: The Hunt Is On
By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
LIKE many visitors to southern Montana, especially the region of the state adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, George Clement marveled at the vast wilderness of the West. On a cold day in the middle of November, Mr. Clement, his wife, Bonnie, and their two teenage sons walked down an old road about four miles from the park boundary.
"The terrain was all wild prairie, with mountains surrounding it," said Mr. Clement, who lives in Belgrade, Mont., about 50 miles northwest of the park. "No trees, just totally open."
From the road, Mr. Clement and his two sons headed up and over one of the mountains. Then, through binoculars, they glimpsed a small group of buffalo on the plains in front of them, grazing in the tall sagebrush. The Clements marveled at the buffalo, massive beasts with full winter coats, some probably weighing a ton.
The Clements began to follow the buffalo, slowly moving through a series of ravines, which concealed them from the animals. "We popped up out of a ravine and suddenly, we were face to face with a buffalo," Mr. Clement said.
The animals stood their ground. And then one of the sons, 17-year-old Buddy, took aim.
"My son shot one shot, and he put it exactly it was supposed to go — at the base of the ear," Mr. Clement said. "The animal kicked and he shot it twice more."
It took a while to realize the significance of that successful kill, since they were absorbed with gutting the animal. Only later, Mr. Clement recalled, did they realize that "we'd been part of Montana history. How many times do you get to win the lottery?"
The Clements aren't the only Montana hunters who feel like they've hit Powerball. This winter, for the first time in over a decade, Montana has allowed a small number of hunters to apply for a license to hunt bison (also known as buffalo), the legendary animal of the plains that was almost hunted to extinction. Buddy Clement was the only member of his family to receive a license.
Scholars believe that at one point more than 30 million buffalo roamed the West. Indians revered the animal, praising its spirit in dances and séances and building their culture around buffalo. But westward expansion of the United States and an insatiable demand for bison hides led to large-scale buffalo massacres, decimating herds.
By the early 1900's, Yellowstone was home to only about 30 bison, and conservationists began efforts to revive the national treasure. As the historian Andrew Isenberg has written, Teddy Roosevelt even feared that the collapse of the buffalo population would neuter American masculinity, since men could no longer hunt big game in the United States.
In recent decades, the buffalo population in Yellowstone, one of the last wild buffalo herds in North America, has been restored. It numbers near 5,000, and buffalo wander out of the park in the winter to feed on grass. Montana's cattle ranchers worry that the wandering buffalo could spread brucellosis, a disease that causes cows to abort.
Seeking a solution, this winter Montana authorized its first buffalo hunt in 15 years, handing out 50 licenses. In coming years, Montana may increase the number. More than 6,000 hunters, including Gov. Brian Schweitzer and over 100 from out of state, entered a lottery for the licenses.
The few winners seemed dumbfounded at their good fortune. (Mr. Schweitzer did not win.) "I thought the chance to hunt buffalo would never come around in my lifetime," said one winner, Darrlyd Pepprock of Stevensville, Mont.
In the late 1980's, Montana also briefly allowed hunters to shoot buffalo wandering out of the park. At that time, game wardens guided the hunters so close they could shoot point-blank. This plan drew harsh criticism, because the guiding guaranteed hunters a kill, anathema to the "fair chase" hunters.
"I wouldn't apply for the hunt in the late 1980's because I didn't like the way the hunt was organized," said Robert Waller of Bozeman, who applied and won a license this year. "You might as well shoot a Hereford."
This time around, said Hal Harper, Governor Schweitzer's chief policy adviser, hunters were not guided and were not guaranteed a thing. "We've made every effort to make this a fair chase hunt," he said.
Like Civil War re-enactors, the community of hunters drawn for this year's hunt studied the past. Before their hunts, Mr. Pepprock and Jim Kinsey, two lottery winners, read accounts of settlers who had hunted on the Plains. Other hunters have scoured the Internet for research on Indian buffalo hunts, or studied ways to sneak up on bison.
"It's a very personal thing," said Rich Clough of Choteau, Mont., who won a license. "It's taking an animal without them ever knowing you're there."
Thomas Blazina of Billings, a license winner, also embraced the past. After researching the buffalo's history, Mr. Blazina said, "We bought an 1895 Winchester rifle — the type Teddy Roosevelt used, and that's what we're going to use."
Mr. Blazina even decided to hunt on horseback, to better approximate the 1800's.
SOME hunters applied for the buffalo license not to fulfill a romantic vision of the 1800's but to fill their freezers (cooking kills the brucellosis bacteria). "My wife and my daughters and I all hunt," Mr. Pepprock said. "Our family is sustained on game meat, one hundred percent."
He said he shot a bison bull that weighed about 1,800 pounds, which will feed his family for a year. (By comparison, elk he hunts weigh some 600 pounds.) "All our friends and family are asking for it, so we've had to give gift packages of meat," he added.
Robert DeLong, a Great Falls, Mont., hunter who won a license, sounded a theme that could be heard at any suburban Whole Foods. "If you buy bison meat, you don't know if they have hormones in them," he said. "This is all natural. We do our own butchering and we have a walk-in cooler. The meat is real high in omega-3 acids. I'm an older person, and I need that."
Mr. DeLong uses the entire animal. "It's amazing how big the tongue is," he said. "You take it and you boil it, skin it, and then slice it. Add horseradish and, man, you've got a good sandwich."
Despite the hunters' excitement, and efforts to make this hunt a fair chase, protests still have erupted throughout the Montana winter. One group, the Buffalo Field Campaign, has not only petitioned the governor against the bison hunt but also shot video of sportsmen with their bison kills, to document the hunt.
Mike Mease, head of the Buffalo Field Campaign, and a subsistence hunter himself, says the hunt is an unfair slaughter. Because the buffalo spend much of the year in Yellowstone, where they interact closely with tourists, they are not truly wild, he said.
"The state wants them to walk outside Yellowstone for three months and be fair chase, then walk into Yellowstone and be docile for tourists," Mr. Mease said. "You can't train these animals to do both."
Instead, he said, the state should enlarge the buffalo habitat, giving the animals access to more year-round land outside the park — land normally used by the cattle industry — so that the buffalo become as wild as possible.
Some Montana hunters agree. "It's still just another parklike hunt," said Joe Gutkowski, who was once named the toughest man in the West by Field & Stream magazine. "I want to see them allow these buffalo to migrate all over public land."
The debate clearly still divides the community; when the Bear Creek Council, a Montana conservation group, held a public forum in December on the bison hunt, it drew a packed house and a fiery discussion. But, said Chris Marchion, president of the Montana Wildlife Federation, a sportsman's group, even if some Yellowstone buffalo have been tamed, if hunts continue, animals will become more wary of hunters — which he says has happened with elk.
THE hunt can at times seem cruel. Buffalo often gather around a fallen animal, an attempt to protect their peers that can resemble mourning. Several hunters this winter said they saw bison walking over to the bloodied bodies and prodding them, as if trying to revive the animals, before hunters shooed them off.
Still, interactions between the Field Campaign and hunters have been peaceful, a contrast with the late 1980's and early 1990's, when hunters and protesters were confrontational, and some protesters were charged with misdemeanor assault.
"I assure them I won't get in their way, but I will document," Mr. Mease said. "We're not an anti-hunting group. There's a big potential for these hunters to be allies in the future, and we're not against a hunt down the road. Hunters can advocate for the habitat of the species they hunt."
Some hunters and conservationists have begun making these linkages. Over the last two decades, as ranching has become less viable in the Great Plains, human populations in Montana and other parts of the Plains have plummeted, allowing for the revival of wildlife like pronghorn antelope.
Across southern Montana, in fact, small towns are littered with boarded-up storefronts and the detritus of old industrial and ranching operations. Many homes look abandoned, their yards covered in weeds.
As the Plains have become depopulated, with social services closing down, conservationists, sportsmen and academics have developed a concept called the Buffalo Commons — an idea first proposed by the land-use specialists Frank and Deborah Popper. In the Buffalo Commons idea, much of the Great Plains would be returned to the way it was before 19th-century settlement, a wild frontier. Creating the Buffalo Commons also would prevent the land from being controlled by large private owners, who often keep hunters off their land.
Already, conservationist groups like the American Prairie Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund have begun buying land in the Great Plains to create a prairie-based preserve, full of bison herds and other native wildlife. Some advocates think hunting could be used to help manage the Buffalo Commons, with sportsmen coming from all over the world to shoot big game in a truly wild landscape, plowing money into the Montana economy.
"We don't want a hunting preserve, strictly, but hunting would be permitted," said Sean Gerrity, president of the American Prairie Foundation.
There is a precedent. In the 19th century, European nobles went on safari not only to Africa but also to America's Great Plains, sometimes employing Indians as guides.
According to Nebraskaland magazine, in one famous case, Grand Duke Alexis, a Russian nobleman, arrived in rural Nebraska in 1872 with other nobles and a retinue of servants lugging the duke's Champagne. Buffalo Bill Cody and Sioux warriors led the duke around the frontier, until Alexis took down a buffalo with Cody's personal rifle, the Lucretia Borgia. After the hunt, Alexis put his booze to good use, and the Russians and the Americans partied the night away.
It could happen again.
"I want the Plains to be a Serengeti-type landscape of large mammals and carnivores, unparalleled in the U.S.," said Glenn Hockett of the Gallatin Wildlife Association, a Montana group of sportsmen and conservationists. "Then we can treat these buffalo like elephants, like the really majestic animals they are."
A Guide for the Modern Buffalo Bill
GETTING A LICENSE
This winter, the buffalo hunt season in Montana was divided in two parts. The first 25 licenses were given out for hunting one male or female bison between Nov. 15 and Jan. 15. The second 25 were for Jan. 15 to Feb. 15. This year, 16 of those licenses were given to Indian tribes. Some went to people who had applied for previous hunts and the rest — 24 — were awarded by lottery.
Almost 6,200 hunters, from Montana and from other states, applied for the hunt. It is likely that next season will operate along similar guidelines and times, though more licenses may be given out. Applications and licenses can be processed online by first going to the Web site for Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Parks: www.fwp.mt.gov.
Working with outfitters, it is possible to hunt buffalo on large ranches in Montana, though hunters are divided over whether these ranches offer a "fair chase" hunt. Hunters who choose the ranch option normally avoid the spring and early summer, when bull buffalo shed their coats and make less attractive trophies.
Outfitters say that bison normally yield 30 to 35 percent of their actual weight in meat, so from a 1,800-pound animal, you'll get roughly 600 pounds of meat.
OUTFITTERS AND OPERATORS
Anyone shooting a buffalo will need help skinning the massive animal, cutting it into pieces and carrying it to a road. For hunters who received licenses this year, the Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency gave a required course on how to stalk, shoot and butcher a buffalo.
Arnaud Outfitting (406-763-4235, www.arnaudoutfitting.com), in Gallatin, takes clients to the Flying D, a ranch owned by Ted Turner with more than 110,000 acres adjacent to Gallatin National Forest, for bison hunts. One-day guided hunts for a trophy bull buffalo cost $4,000; yearlings are cheaper, from $750 each. Arnaud normally leads hunts from June through January.
Cowboy Heaven Consulting, in Bozeman (406-587-9563, www.cowboyhvn.com), also runs hunts at the Flying D throughout the year, though it normally does not guide bull hunts from January through May, when the animals are shedding. Trophy bulls cost $4,000. HOW TO GET THERE
United flies from New York to Bozeman through Denver. In late January, round-trip flights for late February cost about $585. Northwest flies from Newark to Bozeman through Minneapolis for roughly the same price.
From Bozeman, you will have to rent a car. Gardiner, at the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park, is a good base to stalk bison if you have a license; herds wander right past town. Gardiner is about two hours by car from Bozeman. Gallatin is some 20 minutes outside Bozeman.
WHERE TO STAY
Gardiner has many motels catering to park visitors. The Yellowstone Village Inn (800-228-8158, www.yellowstonevinn.com), has 43 rooms, including 3 kitchen suites, from $42 in winter.
In Gallatin, also full of motels, the Gallatin Gateway Inn (800-676-3522, www.gallatingatewayinn.com), built to serve the old scenic railroad into Yellowstone, is probably the classiest option, with one of the best restaurants in the region. In late January, the 33 rooms started at $89 (the inn is closed Tuesday and Wednesday in much of winter).
MORE INFORMATION
Fact sheets on the state's hunt are at www.fwp.mt.gov. You can find out more about the Buffalo Field Campaign, which has led protests against this year's hunt, at www.buffalofieldcampaign.org.
More information about plans to restore the wild bison herds of the Upper Midwest can be found at www.gprc.org, www.npcn.net and www.worldwildlife.org/wildplaces/ngp/projects/prairie.cfm.
Tips on cooking bison are available at www.bisoncentral.com.
American Buffalo: The Hunt Is On
By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
LIKE many visitors to southern Montana, especially the region of the state adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, George Clement marveled at the vast wilderness of the West. On a cold day in the middle of November, Mr. Clement, his wife, Bonnie, and their two teenage sons walked down an old road about four miles from the park boundary.
"The terrain was all wild prairie, with mountains surrounding it," said Mr. Clement, who lives in Belgrade, Mont., about 50 miles northwest of the park. "No trees, just totally open."
From the road, Mr. Clement and his two sons headed up and over one of the mountains. Then, through binoculars, they glimpsed a small group of buffalo on the plains in front of them, grazing in the tall sagebrush. The Clements marveled at the buffalo, massive beasts with full winter coats, some probably weighing a ton.
The Clements began to follow the buffalo, slowly moving through a series of ravines, which concealed them from the animals. "We popped up out of a ravine and suddenly, we were face to face with a buffalo," Mr. Clement said.
The animals stood their ground. And then one of the sons, 17-year-old Buddy, took aim.
"My son shot one shot, and he put it exactly it was supposed to go — at the base of the ear," Mr. Clement said. "The animal kicked and he shot it twice more."
It took a while to realize the significance of that successful kill, since they were absorbed with gutting the animal. Only later, Mr. Clement recalled, did they realize that "we'd been part of Montana history. How many times do you get to win the lottery?"
The Clements aren't the only Montana hunters who feel like they've hit Powerball. This winter, for the first time in over a decade, Montana has allowed a small number of hunters to apply for a license to hunt bison (also known as buffalo), the legendary animal of the plains that was almost hunted to extinction. Buddy Clement was the only member of his family to receive a license.
Scholars believe that at one point more than 30 million buffalo roamed the West. Indians revered the animal, praising its spirit in dances and séances and building their culture around buffalo. But westward expansion of the United States and an insatiable demand for bison hides led to large-scale buffalo massacres, decimating herds.
By the early 1900's, Yellowstone was home to only about 30 bison, and conservationists began efforts to revive the national treasure. As the historian Andrew Isenberg has written, Teddy Roosevelt even feared that the collapse of the buffalo population would neuter American masculinity, since men could no longer hunt big game in the United States.
In recent decades, the buffalo population in Yellowstone, one of the last wild buffalo herds in North America, has been restored. It numbers near 5,000, and buffalo wander out of the park in the winter to feed on grass. Montana's cattle ranchers worry that the wandering buffalo could spread brucellosis, a disease that causes cows to abort.
Seeking a solution, this winter Montana authorized its first buffalo hunt in 15 years, handing out 50 licenses. In coming years, Montana may increase the number. More than 6,000 hunters, including Gov. Brian Schweitzer and over 100 from out of state, entered a lottery for the licenses.
The few winners seemed dumbfounded at their good fortune. (Mr. Schweitzer did not win.) "I thought the chance to hunt buffalo would never come around in my lifetime," said one winner, Darrlyd Pepprock of Stevensville, Mont.
In the late 1980's, Montana also briefly allowed hunters to shoot buffalo wandering out of the park. At that time, game wardens guided the hunters so close they could shoot point-blank. This plan drew harsh criticism, because the guiding guaranteed hunters a kill, anathema to the "fair chase" hunters.
"I wouldn't apply for the hunt in the late 1980's because I didn't like the way the hunt was organized," said Robert Waller of Bozeman, who applied and won a license this year. "You might as well shoot a Hereford."
This time around, said Hal Harper, Governor Schweitzer's chief policy adviser, hunters were not guided and were not guaranteed a thing. "We've made every effort to make this a fair chase hunt," he said.
Like Civil War re-enactors, the community of hunters drawn for this year's hunt studied the past. Before their hunts, Mr. Pepprock and Jim Kinsey, two lottery winners, read accounts of settlers who had hunted on the Plains. Other hunters have scoured the Internet for research on Indian buffalo hunts, or studied ways to sneak up on bison.
"It's a very personal thing," said Rich Clough of Choteau, Mont., who won a license. "It's taking an animal without them ever knowing you're there."
Thomas Blazina of Billings, a license winner, also embraced the past. After researching the buffalo's history, Mr. Blazina said, "We bought an 1895 Winchester rifle — the type Teddy Roosevelt used, and that's what we're going to use."
Mr. Blazina even decided to hunt on horseback, to better approximate the 1800's.
SOME hunters applied for the buffalo license not to fulfill a romantic vision of the 1800's but to fill their freezers (cooking kills the brucellosis bacteria). "My wife and my daughters and I all hunt," Mr. Pepprock said. "Our family is sustained on game meat, one hundred percent."
He said he shot a bison bull that weighed about 1,800 pounds, which will feed his family for a year. (By comparison, elk he hunts weigh some 600 pounds.) "All our friends and family are asking for it, so we've had to give gift packages of meat," he added.
Robert DeLong, a Great Falls, Mont., hunter who won a license, sounded a theme that could be heard at any suburban Whole Foods. "If you buy bison meat, you don't know if they have hormones in them," he said. "This is all natural. We do our own butchering and we have a walk-in cooler. The meat is real high in omega-3 acids. I'm an older person, and I need that."
Mr. DeLong uses the entire animal. "It's amazing how big the tongue is," he said. "You take it and you boil it, skin it, and then slice it. Add horseradish and, man, you've got a good sandwich."
Despite the hunters' excitement, and efforts to make this hunt a fair chase, protests still have erupted throughout the Montana winter. One group, the Buffalo Field Campaign, has not only petitioned the governor against the bison hunt but also shot video of sportsmen with their bison kills, to document the hunt.
Mike Mease, head of the Buffalo Field Campaign, and a subsistence hunter himself, says the hunt is an unfair slaughter. Because the buffalo spend much of the year in Yellowstone, where they interact closely with tourists, they are not truly wild, he said.
"The state wants them to walk outside Yellowstone for three months and be fair chase, then walk into Yellowstone and be docile for tourists," Mr. Mease said. "You can't train these animals to do both."
Instead, he said, the state should enlarge the buffalo habitat, giving the animals access to more year-round land outside the park — land normally used by the cattle industry — so that the buffalo become as wild as possible.
Some Montana hunters agree. "It's still just another parklike hunt," said Joe Gutkowski, who was once named the toughest man in the West by Field & Stream magazine. "I want to see them allow these buffalo to migrate all over public land."
The debate clearly still divides the community; when the Bear Creek Council, a Montana conservation group, held a public forum in December on the bison hunt, it drew a packed house and a fiery discussion. But, said Chris Marchion, president of the Montana Wildlife Federation, a sportsman's group, even if some Yellowstone buffalo have been tamed, if hunts continue, animals will become more wary of hunters — which he says has happened with elk.
THE hunt can at times seem cruel. Buffalo often gather around a fallen animal, an attempt to protect their peers that can resemble mourning. Several hunters this winter said they saw bison walking over to the bloodied bodies and prodding them, as if trying to revive the animals, before hunters shooed them off.
Still, interactions between the Field Campaign and hunters have been peaceful, a contrast with the late 1980's and early 1990's, when hunters and protesters were confrontational, and some protesters were charged with misdemeanor assault.
"I assure them I won't get in their way, but I will document," Mr. Mease said. "We're not an anti-hunting group. There's a big potential for these hunters to be allies in the future, and we're not against a hunt down the road. Hunters can advocate for the habitat of the species they hunt."
Some hunters and conservationists have begun making these linkages. Over the last two decades, as ranching has become less viable in the Great Plains, human populations in Montana and other parts of the Plains have plummeted, allowing for the revival of wildlife like pronghorn antelope.
Across southern Montana, in fact, small towns are littered with boarded-up storefronts and the detritus of old industrial and ranching operations. Many homes look abandoned, their yards covered in weeds.
As the Plains have become depopulated, with social services closing down, conservationists, sportsmen and academics have developed a concept called the Buffalo Commons — an idea first proposed by the land-use specialists Frank and Deborah Popper. In the Buffalo Commons idea, much of the Great Plains would be returned to the way it was before 19th-century settlement, a wild frontier. Creating the Buffalo Commons also would prevent the land from being controlled by large private owners, who often keep hunters off their land.
Already, conservationist groups like the American Prairie Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund have begun buying land in the Great Plains to create a prairie-based preserve, full of bison herds and other native wildlife. Some advocates think hunting could be used to help manage the Buffalo Commons, with sportsmen coming from all over the world to shoot big game in a truly wild landscape, plowing money into the Montana economy.
"We don't want a hunting preserve, strictly, but hunting would be permitted," said Sean Gerrity, president of the American Prairie Foundation.
There is a precedent. In the 19th century, European nobles went on safari not only to Africa but also to America's Great Plains, sometimes employing Indians as guides.
According to Nebraskaland magazine, in one famous case, Grand Duke Alexis, a Russian nobleman, arrived in rural Nebraska in 1872 with other nobles and a retinue of servants lugging the duke's Champagne. Buffalo Bill Cody and Sioux warriors led the duke around the frontier, until Alexis took down a buffalo with Cody's personal rifle, the Lucretia Borgia. After the hunt, Alexis put his booze to good use, and the Russians and the Americans partied the night away.
It could happen again.
"I want the Plains to be a Serengeti-type landscape of large mammals and carnivores, unparalleled in the U.S.," said Glenn Hockett of the Gallatin Wildlife Association, a Montana group of sportsmen and conservationists. "Then we can treat these buffalo like elephants, like the really majestic animals they are."
A Guide for the Modern Buffalo Bill
GETTING A LICENSE
This winter, the buffalo hunt season in Montana was divided in two parts. The first 25 licenses were given out for hunting one male or female bison between Nov. 15 and Jan. 15. The second 25 were for Jan. 15 to Feb. 15. This year, 16 of those licenses were given to Indian tribes. Some went to people who had applied for previous hunts and the rest — 24 — were awarded by lottery.
Almost 6,200 hunters, from Montana and from other states, applied for the hunt. It is likely that next season will operate along similar guidelines and times, though more licenses may be given out. Applications and licenses can be processed online by first going to the Web site for Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Parks: www.fwp.mt.gov.
Working with outfitters, it is possible to hunt buffalo on large ranches in Montana, though hunters are divided over whether these ranches offer a "fair chase" hunt. Hunters who choose the ranch option normally avoid the spring and early summer, when bull buffalo shed their coats and make less attractive trophies.
Outfitters say that bison normally yield 30 to 35 percent of their actual weight in meat, so from a 1,800-pound animal, you'll get roughly 600 pounds of meat.
OUTFITTERS AND OPERATORS
Anyone shooting a buffalo will need help skinning the massive animal, cutting it into pieces and carrying it to a road. For hunters who received licenses this year, the Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency gave a required course on how to stalk, shoot and butcher a buffalo.
Arnaud Outfitting (406-763-4235, www.arnaudoutfitting.com), in Gallatin, takes clients to the Flying D, a ranch owned by Ted Turner with more than 110,000 acres adjacent to Gallatin National Forest, for bison hunts. One-day guided hunts for a trophy bull buffalo cost $4,000; yearlings are cheaper, from $750 each. Arnaud normally leads hunts from June through January.
Cowboy Heaven Consulting, in Bozeman (406-587-9563, www.cowboyhvn.com), also runs hunts at the Flying D throughout the year, though it normally does not guide bull hunts from January through May, when the animals are shedding. Trophy bulls cost $4,000. HOW TO GET THERE
United flies from New York to Bozeman through Denver. In late January, round-trip flights for late February cost about $585. Northwest flies from Newark to Bozeman through Minneapolis for roughly the same price.
From Bozeman, you will have to rent a car. Gardiner, at the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park, is a good base to stalk bison if you have a license; herds wander right past town. Gardiner is about two hours by car from Bozeman. Gallatin is some 20 minutes outside Bozeman.
WHERE TO STAY
Gardiner has many motels catering to park visitors. The Yellowstone Village Inn (800-228-8158, www.yellowstonevinn.com), has 43 rooms, including 3 kitchen suites, from $42 in winter.
In Gallatin, also full of motels, the Gallatin Gateway Inn (800-676-3522, www.gallatingatewayinn.com), built to serve the old scenic railroad into Yellowstone, is probably the classiest option, with one of the best restaurants in the region. In late January, the 33 rooms started at $89 (the inn is closed Tuesday and Wednesday in much of winter).
MORE INFORMATION
Fact sheets on the state's hunt are at www.fwp.mt.gov. You can find out more about the Buffalo Field Campaign, which has led protests against this year's hunt, at www.buffalofieldcampaign.org.
More information about plans to restore the wild bison herds of the Upper Midwest can be found at www.gprc.org, www.npcn.net and www.worldwildlife.org/wildplaces/ngp/projects/prairie.cfm.
Tips on cooking bison are available at www.bisoncentral.com.
