The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1909-10-20
PLANS LAST
BISON HUNT
VETERAN DROvtR IS READY
Peril In The Huge Task-Animals
Taken Going to Canada, Others
to Buffalo Society.

SPOKANE, Wash, Oct. 1S.-Mi-
chaei Pablo, a veteran drover of the
Flathead country in western Montana
and his crew of twelve picked riders
are making preparations for the final
reservation. There are fully $50 ami
mails and they are the widest brutes
in the country. They escaped four
previous roundups in the last two
years. and if Pablo and his fellows
are successful in taking the animals
to Ravalli, the shipping point, they
will have accomplished task which
is looked upon by cattlemen as being
something out of the ordinary.
This is my last roundup" said
Pablo. 81 am getting along in years
and can't follow them as 1 did thirty
or forty years ago. Still, I love to
hear the swish of the rope and the
pounding of the hoofs. We expect to
get most of them. They are to be
delivered to the Canadian goverHment,
while those that get away Will be sold
to the National Bison society and
driven to the new preserve on the
reservation.
I'VE have made careful prepara-
tons for the drive and the boys be-
Heve they will deliver every animal,
but am not SO sure about that. The
Canadian DOM missioner is now at
Ravalli and will stay there until the
herd is ready for shipment across the
boundary"
Preparations for the Roundup.
Pablo has secured twenty of the
hAc Co tI1A ,...,
animals Of great endurance and aH
are trained COW horses The riders
also are familiar with buffalo and are
not afraid of anything on foot or hoof.
A boom has been thrown across the
Joco river at a horseshoe bend thirty
miles above Ravaili. and big corrals
and into the leading chutes. 1t II
Pablo's plan to drive the animals
from their range to the river, urge
them across, and it is expected the
boom will defect them into the pas
lures. Pablo. though well along in
years; Takes the most desperate
chances and is always in the fore
front when there is need of daring.
"If I don't take these chances I
can't very well ask my riders to-" is
his watchword. "If my riders think l
am afraid they will also probably be-
come afraid"
Travelling west shows are not to be
compared with the roundup of buffalo
SO far as the spectacular goes. Every
moment the lives of the riders are en-
dansered by the rush of the madden
ed beasts.
Photographer Has Narrow Escape.
One of the interested spectators at
the last roundup was a photographer,
who passed six weeks taking pictures.
The riders had herded considerable
number of the animals almost to the
corrals, when they broke and scatter
ed. The photographer was on a hill
side overlooking the corrals. He had
a camera strapped across his breast
and another on tripod. He snapped
the stampeding brutes several times.
The animals circled to the high
ground and before he realized their
nearness they charged upon him. He
ped to his breast and then made a
quick grab for a big limb on the tree
beneath which he was standing and
swung up as the animals ran by him.
Their tossing heads threw his legs III
the air and his feet graZed their backs
His tripod and camera We're ground
to bits and it was only by good luck
that he escaped being trampled to
death.