As the five hunters in the Vader party gather in the breakfast room of a Gardiner, Mont., motel at 6 a.m. on a recent Monday, they shake their heads and mutter regretfully about the drownings. Pictures of the mishap, taken by Mease's group, were splashed across newspapers over the weekend.
Vader sits down, bleary-eyed. As he drains his Styrofoam coffee cup, he confesses that he was up all night, powered by a mix of anxiety and anticipation.
Neither Vader nor his brother David, who drove up from Denver, have hunted anything on the scale of a buffalo before. Jeff Vader shot a grizzly bear in Alaska 20 years ago, but now he spends his time chasing elk and deer. Like most buffalo hunters, they savor its meat and relish the chance to stalk a creature that has rarely been legal to hunt.
The party sets out in two pickups before sunrise, veering onto dirt roads that rise onto the sagebrush plateaus where the buffalo roam. George Stirner, a grizzled outdoorsman whom the group often looks to for guidance, talks about the joys of hunting. "It's a challenge to meet a wild animal on its own ground, its own turf," he says. But, he admits, buffalo are more docile than most other wild animals.
The hunters soon spot several buffalo but move on because two other hunters are watching the animals. Vader stops in front of a second cluster.
Regulations prevent the hunters from firing over the road, so they pour out of their trucks and scale ridges to circle the animals. But the buffalo wander off. Two big ones tramp up one ridge. The hunters follow, and Jeff Vader carefully lies on his belly and takes aim.
Vader's permit allows one kill, and the animals are too close to each other. A bullet might pierce one and hit the other. He waits. Suddenly, a sound like thunder shakes the hillside. The buffalo run off.
Vader rises. "Our first lesson in hunting buffalo," he says with a smile. "They spook."
The party gives chase, running up and down another set of ridges. "Now this is hunting," Stirner says with satisfaction.
When the buffalo cross into private land, the hunters decide to look elsewhere; they drive farther down the road until they spot another group in a picture-perfect setting. The 13 buffalo are strung out on a high plateau rimmed with scattered mountain cedar and juniper. Looming behind them is the snowcapped 10,969-foot Electric Peak, and a wall of other serrated mountains that form the northern boundary of Yellowstone.
