Buffalo make interesting pasture companions

Published 11:22 am Sunday, April 11, 2004

If you’re looking for a home where buffalo roam you’re probably out of luck.

Buffalo, or bison, don’t really roam anymore, they shuffle in backyard pastures eating hay or oats. Occasionally, they might run around their pens when a noise spooks them or if they hear someone bringing dinner. Coincidentally, most of their futures involve a dinner menu and a bottle of A-1 sauce.

But for a select few people, Buffalo continue to be awe inspiring reminders of a time without fences.

Tom Lohuis has 11 bison in a pasture on River Road in Hermiston. His first two came from a man who offered to pay for land with buffalo instead of money. Lohuis took them.

Lohuis has built up his own herd over the years and has had to learn the finer points of staring down a bison.

“If you run they’ll come and get you,” Lohuis said. “If you don’t run they won’t chase you.”

Lohuis says he can whistle for them and the bison come running, usually because they know food is on the way. “Heads come up, and they come running.”

John McCallister keeps a few head of buffalo on his grandmother Alva Hunt’s farm outside of Hermiston.

One bull, with the knee-knocking nickname of Demon, reminds Hunt that these animals are not exactly cuddly critters.

“I don’t think any fence could hold them if they wanted to get through,” Hunt said while the burly bison stared at her through a wire fence.

McCallister is not raising the animals for meat though like many of the buffalo farmers in the area, he is doing it simply in awe.

“It’s the fascination of just having them,” McCallister said.

The Hermiston buffalo king however is John Walchli with about 50 head on his farm. Walchli began getting the animals more than 20 years ago as “a hobby” and from there the heard just took off.

In the summer bus loads of people stop to look at the few he keeps in a pen near the road. Further back into the farm though is the real herd, about 25 animals, each weighing in on the business side of 1,000 pounds.

The bison are comfortable enough around Walchli to let him get out of his truck in the middle of the herd and throw oats out, but he never forgets they’re still wild.

“You always face them, you never turn your back on them.”

McCallister has never been hurt by a bison on his farm and says he isn’t ready to rub up against one anytime soon. Still after years of being around humans the buffalo will do amazing things.

“I feed them all summer right out of my hand,” Walchli said.

The finger food of choice for a hungry bison? Watermelon.

Only in Hermiston.