American bison, the animal we all think of when we think of the West. For me, it is the animal that represents our American history. Show me a picture of a buffalo and I will immediately start dreaming of mountain men and Indians fighting it out on the plains. A few hundred years ago these beautiful animals roamed the land in such great numbers, that they say it took three days for them to pass. I cannot imagine that many passing all at once. The native people’s survival depended on this amazing creature.

Since I can remember, I had wanted to hunt the buffalo. I always imagined myself hunting this great beast from horseback with a longbow, just like the Native Americans once had. Well, after years of research and time spent learning all I could about Ta-tonka, I found that this big animal no longer roamed free in America. British Columbia still has a totally free ranging herd, but we as Americans, only have those owned by ranchers and those in protected parks. This changed up my plan. I did not want to go shoot one in a pen. I have never hunted anything under a high fence and I didn't want my dream animal to be my first. After searching the Internet high and low, I learned that ranches out west still had buffalo free ranging. Free ranging so to speak. They were not in pens, but on 20 to 50 thousand acre cattle ranches. I looked most of these ranches over and decided on an outfitter that had an ad on WomenHunters website. It was South Dakota Trophies.

I talked over all the details with the master guide Randy Routier. He assured me that these buffalo were as wild and as free as they could be in this day and age. I arranged the hunt and started planning. I knew my crazy childhood dream of hunting off horseback and with a longbow was a bit much, so I compromised and chose an AR-31 and chased them on foot. Once I had it all set and in motion, I made a telephone call to Michele Leqve, a good friend and also someone in the hunting industry, I look up to. I asked her if she would accompany me and run the camera for me. Michele didn't hesitate and jumped at the opportuinty. For that, I am very thankful to her. She caught the whole trip on film.

We flew to Rapid City South Dakota and drove from there to Buffalo. Yeah, I know, hunting buffalo in Buffalo. Cool, huh? We started the hunt the next morning and in no time, we had five good bulls in sight. The scenery gave me a "going back in time" feeling. I felt like I was back in 1870. We watched from a ridge as the bulls milled around. They winded us and off they went. I would have never thought that an animal that big could move that fast. We had to cover lots of ground on foot and even hid in a dried up creek bed. Michele had a hard time not looking for dropped antlers, while she was filming. It was like a magnet for her. Shed hunting is something Michele enjoys and I promised when we had finished the hunt that we would give it a try.

When my bull finally presented a shot, I was at 39 yards. I hit him and wanted to get another arrow in him quickly. He was close to 2,000 pounds and I was taking no chances. As quickly as I could I knocked another arrow and hit him again this time with a complete pass through. When he went down I was out of breath and so relieved that he was out of commission. I didn't really fathom how big one of these guys really are. That night we slept well and the next morning Michele was organizing our shed hunt.

Michele has hunted many different species of big game with her bow, but buffalo was not something she was interested in hunting. Give her a land full of dropped antlers though and just watch her shine. We must have explored half of the 50 thousand-acre ranch, all on foot looking for "horns" as Michele called them. Once I found my first one, bam! I was hooked. It is as addictive as mushroom hunting. We did well finding about 30 antlers. We even filmed it for the WomenHunters Outdoors show. Randy’s Mom took us to a really good spot on the ranch and showed us Indian tipi rings, where the Indians had once camped. That was so cool. Randy’s stepfather took us to a pioneer cabin. It was under ground. The Routier family was so good to us. Their hospitality was above and beyond five stars. Randy is the sixth generation on this ranch. They shared their history and made us feel like family. I would recommend this Outfitter to all of you. If you ever looking for a place to hunt in South Dakota, Routier outfitting is the place.