Hi Everyone,
As all of you know, we are actively involved in the conservation of North American buffalo, or bison. As a result, we were intrigued by a recent article in the
Richmond-Times Dispatch, entitled, “Hinkle: We mustn’t let America be buffaloed,”
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/rtd-opinion/2012/jun/12/tdopin02-hinkle-we-mustnt-let-america-be-buffaloed-ar-1980047.
For those who might be interested in this buffalo discussion, our response to Mr. Hinkle follows:
Editor
Richmond-Times Dispatch
Dear Editor,
We find it truly amazing that Mr. Hinkle, in one short article, could manage to offend retirees, milk-industry lobbyists, 4th graders, archaeologists (Nevada’s 2,000 year old artifact), “a bunch of state bison associations,” twenty-two state governments, fishermen, paleontologists, fans of jousting, square-dance lovers, and potato farmers, among others too numerous to name. That’s kind of breathtaking. Since we’ve owned a buffalo ranch in Wyoming for twenty years, we hope you will give us the opportunity to correct a few things in A. Barton Hinkle’s article: “Hinkle: We mustn’t let America be buffaloed,” published on June 12, 2012.
First of all, Mr. Hinkle says that buffalo are not the “sharpest knife in the drawer,” and justifies this statement by saying, “Bison were hunted nearly to extinction in the 19th century because frontiersmen could shoot them by the dozens while the rest of the herd stood around, oblivious:
First Bison: “Did you hear that? Sounded like a shot?”
Second Bison: “Probably just a car backfiring. Say, Phil sure looks tired, doesn’t he?”
For your information, Mr. Hinkle, this is just not accurate. Vehicles that moved under their own power date back to 1678 when Father Ferdinand Verbiest created a steam powered vehicle for Chinese Emperor Chien Lung, but buffalo could not possibly have thought a gunshot was a backfire until the internal combustion engine was created by Etienne Lenoir and driven in Paris in 1862. And, since Bison bison bison are a uniquely American animal, there weren’t any plains bison in Paris in 1862. In point of fact, we suspect that 99.99% of buffalo never heard a backfire, let alone recognized one, until Charles and Frank Duryea built the first gasoline powered car and took it out for road trials in 1893. As every 4th grader in America knows, by that time buffalo were on the verge of extinction. The once vast herds had gone from around 50 million animals down to around 500 animals in the United States. It’s only due to extraordinary conservation efforts, primarily by concerned American ranchers, that buffalo exist at all today, so we doubt that more than a handful of frontier buffalo ever had a chance to mistake a gunshot for a backfire.
Secondly, contrary to Mr. Hinkle’s assertion, buffalo are not dumb. For example, our first bottle-baby was Pia. Pia’s mother was killed by a lightning strike. We found her and brought her home when she was about 24 hours old, and raised her on bottles of goat’s milk. By the time Pia was six months old, she knew about 170 English words. As Dr. Stanley Coren notes in his excellent book, The Intelligence of Dogs, that is about the same number of words known by a smart trained dog. (www.abc.net.au/animals/program3/factsheet1.htm). Please also read, “Language Milestones for Toddlers: Early Childhood Language Development and Games to Stimulate it”: (http://suite101.com/article/language-milestones-for-toddlers-a182608). This erudite article clearly verifies that at the age of six months Pia knew more English words than Mr. Hinkle did. However, since Mr. Hinkle thinks that Bison bison bison means, “we can’t think of any other words,” perhaps that should have been obvious.
Lastly, since Mr. Hinkle compared the National Bison Legacy Act to Gibbon’s classic work, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” he obviously thinks S. 3248 will have dire consequences for this nation if, as he says, “it goes down the buffalo road.” Maybe Mr. Hinkle should return to writing about “trivial matters such as the presidential election and the possibility of nuclear war with Iran.” He won’t have to have as much historical knowledge as a 4th grader or a retiree. This will clearly benefit all readers of the Richmond-Times Dispatch.
Yours Sincerely,
W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear
Red Canyon Buffalo Ranch
Thermopolis, Wyoming