By Jeff Tribe

 

“Buffalo Ben” Van Haastert’s love for his herd of prairie bison is tempered by a healthy dose of respect.
“They look very clumsy,” he cautioned as we prepared to deliver a large round bale of hay into a feeder. “But that can change in three seconds.” Bison can reach over 55 kilometres an hour in short bursts, Van Haastert continued, fast enough to outrun a horse.
“And they can reach that speed in 10 feet. That’s how super fast they are… and dangerous.”
Thirty-eight years a dairy farmer, Ben and wife Anke’s semi-retirement from the Woodstock area to their current property at 255395 25th Line, Thamesford, opened the door to a passion fostered from the age of six through a model bison that was gifted to him.
“The animal always intrigued me,” said Ben, who in a pre-internet world would enthusiastically read as many print articles as he could on the species’ history and contemporary status. “I wanted to learn more about them.”
An estimated 20-50-million bison once roamed North America, says Van Haastert. An enthusiastic historian, he has toured battlegrounds including Waterloo, Gettysburg and Little Big Horn along with Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site near Lethbridge, Alberta. At one of the world’s largest, oldest and best-preserved buffalo jumps, Indigenous people would skilfully stampede herds over a cliff, large-scale harvest of a resource crucial to their survival.
Indigenous people did not put a dent in bison populations. But the Europeans did, with overhunting, slaughter for sport, the arrival of the railways and also, importantly, demand for buffalo hides as a source of shoe, belt and coat leather in Great Britain. The ‘“big kill” happened between 1870 and 1878, says Van Haastert.
“In four-and-a-half or five years, they wiped them out, basically,” he says. 

Initially, a bull hide would bring $5, and a female $3, which was a lot of money in those days, before the script flipped and people realized cow hides were much easier to work with.
In the wild, herds featured around 200 cows and a couple of dominant bulls, which hunters would shoot first. Afterward, the cows tended to roam around the bull carcasses, allowing the slaughter to continue. After the hunters were done, a crew came through that was able to process 35-40 hides daily. Hides were treated with arsenicum, dried in the sun and loaded on wagons. Hides were often spoiled during processing or in bad weather before drying, or wagonloads were lost to accidents en route, and only about half of the hides reaching their destination were deemed acceptable for market.
“That was a waste,” says Van Haastert.
Beyond the back-breaking work, hunting crews lost appendages, limbs and their lives to accidents, or got caught in unexpectedly early winter storms.  
“The money was good, but you took a big risk.”
The top kill was in 1873 when 1.5 million hides shipped from Dodge City, a number falling to 158,000 in 1874, partially due to a bad winter but also to reduced numbers, says Van Haastert. The precipitous drop in bison was mirrored in an Indigenous population already devastated by disease.
“They basically took their grocery stores away.”
By the turn of the century, only a few bison were left on the prairies, a score in Yellowstone Park, a couple hundred wood bison (which have longer legs than their prairie cousins) on Elk Island in Alberta, and a few on farms and in zoos.
“From there, people built the herd back up.”
Today, Van Haastert says Canadian and American bison associations estimate there are around 700,000 bison in North America, a number they would like to see reach 1,000,000 eventually. 
Ben’s contribution began a decade ago, fuelled by the view of lowland pasture from their window. They thought it would be “super, super cool” to add a couple of roaming bison on the pasture. As per strong industry recommendations, he started small, purchasing 11 yearlings from a herd near Hagersville.
“And then you learn the animal.”
Van Haastert’s herd currently numbers around 40 cows and calves and one breeding bull. Adult females weigh between 1,200 and 1,400 pounds, with an eight-year-old bull as much as 2,000 to 3,000 pounds, with elevated aggression matching their much larger size.
“You can’t trust them,” says Ben. “You need four eyes on your head - two on the front and two on the back.”
Although comfortable walking between cows and younger bulls, Van Haastert errs on the side of caution. 
“They’re not tame at all.”
He cuts a majority of hay bale wrapping before entering the paddock to minimize time and exposure, always closes and locks gates, and has an exit strategy, particularly with a bull, always keeping the tractor between them.
“I always have to think about safety.”
Ben’s previous bull, whose head is mounted inside his retail outlet, was particularly aggressive. During one roundup, he cleared a seven-and-a-half foot corral wall on his third attempt with a combination jump and “climb.”
“We watched it and couldn’t believe our eyes.”
Bison are seasonal breeders, typically calving between the end of April and July. Calves are “very light,” usually between 35 and 40 pounds, and while they begin grazing around 14 days and have access to creep-fed oat pellets, they are dependent on their mother’s milk until weaned at nine months, reaching 600 pounds as yearlings. Resultantly, Van Haastert has gently refused offers to purchase a calf or two.
“They will survive, but without milk it is standing still, it doesn’t grow.”
Round-ups do not involve a chase. Van Haastert gets them into a corral and loading chutes through strategically closing gates, in combination with treats and controlling feed and water sources.  They are intelligent and innately suspicious animals.
“You have to be quick and you only fool them once. If you miss out on that day, you miss out for the whole day, they won’t be back.”

Ben is assisted during round-ups by a group of volunteer fellow farmers, without whom he’d be unable to do what he does. “They like to do it too because it’s different,” he says.
Van Haastert butchers a limited number of “99.9 per cent organic” animals for sale through the Buffalo Ben Bison store on the farm, offering government-inspected, vacuum-packed steaks, roasts, ground bison and pepperettes.
“The taste is a little sweeter than beef,” says Ben, likening its flavour to moose. “And because it’s grass-fed, you have to cook it very low and slow.”
He also builds experiences around the bison, photo opportunities and summer tours, peaking in July with the presence of calves. Ben has a high wagon which can hold up to 18, often family groups looking for a unique opportunity to view bison grazing. “But I can do a tour for two, too.”
Admittedly, bison are more Ben’s thing than Anke’s. “She doesn’t come out of the tractor,” he smiled. However, his wife has been supportive of what, for Ben, is a childhood dream he never thought would be realized.
“If you would have asked me 20, 30 years ago, I would say you’re nuts, you’re crazy,” he concluded. “I could never have imagined this.”
If you’re looking for Buffalo Ben Bison, call 519-608-3020 or email [email protected]. ◊