Livestock
42 www.FarmProgress.com ◆ June 2012
Prairie Farmer
Bison keeps niche in red-meat market
By P.J. GRIEKSPOOR
D
AVE Carter makes no secret of his
love for bison — both the animals
that numbered in the millions on the
Great Plains and the tenderloin he likes to
cook up in a cast-iron skillet and serve with
cowboy potatoes.
Since 2001, Carter has been head of the
National Bison Association and one of the
nation’s top cheerleaders for the shaggy
beasts that were almost hunted to extinction in the early days of the American West.
In April, he spoke to the North American
Agricultural Journalists at its annual convention in Washington, D.C., and introduced the group to Washington-area bison
rancher Trey Lewis, owner of Gunpowder
Bison, which supplies meat to restaurants
and meat markets in the D.C. area.
Lewis said he harvests about 450 animals a year and supplies meat to 10 area
farmers markets as well as high-end restaurants. He also sells meat online.
“We walk a fine line between knowing
how to meet demand for our product, yet
hold back heifers for herd expansion and
replacement,” Lewis told the group.
Carter said work is currently being
done to map the bison genome, and expectations are that the effort will be completed
in July of this year.
PASSION FOR BISON:
Dave Carter, head of the
National Bison Association,
says bison is a niche
market, and growers are
willing to embrace that.
“We don’t want to be the
next beef,” he says.
The fall of bison
Bison flourished in the era of the big mammoths some 160,000 years ago, Carter said,
feeding on the native grasses of the vast
grass prairie ecosystem that once covered
almost 40% of North America. By the time
the Native Americans first obtained horses
and rifles, bison numbers had multiplied to
between 30 million and 50 million, and they
had evolved into a species able to survive
brutal climatic conditions and defeat all
predators — except humans.
From the height of white settlement
and hunting from 1889 to 1894, bison were
hunted mercilessly, with hides shipped
back east and meat left to rot on the
prairie. By 1894, historians estimate that
fewer than 1,000 bison were left.
That’s about the time that five ranchers,
including Charles Goodnight and his wife,
put together an effort to gather up the remaining bison and try to find ways to help
them survive and become re-established.
In 1905, William Hornaday, with sup-
Key Points
■ Bison meat has enjoyed a comeback as
an exotic, niche food.
■ Bison were hunted almost to extinction
in the late 1800s.
■ An effort to interbreed bison with beef
cattle was a total failure.
port from President Theodore Roosevelt,
founded the American Bison Society, and
in 1907, 17 head of bison were sent to
the newly established Wichita Mountain
Preserve in Oklahoma. The comeback of
the bison was off and running.
By 1965, the herd at South Dakota’s
Custer State Park was large enough that
the first public auction of breeding stock
was held, and by the 1990s bison had
become the “in” niche crop, with a Gold
Trophy bull selling for $101,000.
But as is often the case with “hot” new
trends, the zeal didn’t last. By 2002, a Gold
Trophy bull brought only $5,800, and the
business of bison meat was becoming a
serious one.
“We know that bison will always be a
niche market, and we treat ourselves accordingly. We don’t want to be the next
beef,” Carter said.
Eco-friendly operations
For many people, bison has a number of
spot-on qualities. It is an earth-friendly
product, high in protein, low in fat and high
in omega-3 fatty acids. Bison ranches tend
to be family-owned, earth-friendly and
chemical-free operations.
Bison can survive deep snow by using
their powerful front legs to dig down to
frozen grass or feeding on shrubs and tree
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About 100 years ago, Carter said, there
was an effort to see if interbreeding bison
with European beef genetics would produce calves with hybrid vigor and a superior meat product.
The experiment, he said, was an unmitigated failure.
“Not only did the interbreeding not
produce hybrid vigor, it produced just the
opposite,” he said. “The first-generation
bulls were sterile, and the females had
calving problems and high mortality rates
of calves. The whole idea was scrapped.”
While there may be beef DNA traces in
some herds as a result of that effort, Carter
said, almost all of the bison raised today
are genetically the same animals as those
that roamed the Plains in the 1800s.
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