I am occasionally asked, “Roger, what’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever caught?” The question got me to thinking. In August 1999, Tom, my son-in-law, and I were fishing for catfish beneath the first island below the Ft. Randall Dam at Pickstown. Around midnight my line snagged on something and I thought I’d have to break it off. When it finally popped loose, I reeled in a buffalo vertebrae. I could tell it was buffalo by the fin on the vertebrae that was from the hump area.

When we first moved to Wagner in 1976, I frequently saw buffalo skulls beneath the surface in the gin-clear waters below the dam. I believe it was illegal to retrieve them. Other than that, they deteriorated and crumpled once exposed to the air. What had once happened down there? What had caused a massive die-off?

In the volume, The Making of a Community - A History of Jerauld County to 1980, local Wessington Spring’s historian Tom Shonley wrote the following in his story, “The Last of the Buffalo.”

“In the year 1867 the river boat Nelle-Peck, owned by Durfee and Peck, who at that time owned all the fur trading business on the Missouri, made a trip upstream as far as the Grand River. On its return it became lodged on a sand bar near Pocahontus Island not far from Chamberlain. The river was low and the weather cold. The boat froze in before it could be freed. The captain and crew retired to Ft. Randall for the winter, except for Mr. George Brown, who was the ship’s steward. Mr. Brown lived on the boat during the winter to preserve ownership for the company.

As the spring came in 1868, the annual migration of the buffalo from the northeast approached the river. (If the herd approached from the northeast, it must certainly have passed over the western portion of our area.) The buffalo began to cross the river, but the ice was soft and would not support the weight of the herd. Mr. Brown wrote: ‘There was the most tearful scrambling, bellowing, leaping and plunging that ever awoke the echoes of the Missouri,’ and as it is the custom of the rear of the herd to keep pushing, the complete herd drowned in the river. For a distance of one hundred miles below, dead buffalo were to be found. Mr. Brown estimated the size of the herd to be six miles wide and fifteen miles long.

Considering that it is impossible for the buffalo to survive in an area of farms and ranches, could it be that the buffalo was not exterminated by the hunter’s gun, but by Devine Providence?”

In answer to Shonley’s question, we now know that disease, not over-hunting, killed our once mighty buffalo herds. Of interest to me was Brown’s statement about the spring buffalo migration moving from the northeast to the southwest.

Getting back to Pickstown, there is a steep ledge on the east side of the Missouri River in the area below the Ft. Randall Dam. Could a vast herd moving from the northeast have fallen over that cliff or ledge on the east bank and been pushed forward by the buffalo that followed from the rear? This would explain the many buffalo skeletons in that part of the river and my snagged vertebrae. I’ve thought about carbon dating my buffalo vertebrae, but that’s expensive, and I don’t know where I’d have it done.

There’s also the possibility that Brown’s “six mile wide by fifteen miles long herd” might have hit a snag in the Pickstown area and piled up in that location. I’d be interested in your thoughts on the subject. Oh yes, we caught some big cats that night.

As I embark on my 50th year of column writing, I realize that my writing days are numbered. I’ll continue as long as I’m able or you’ll put up with me, but I’m not planning a retirement any time soon as this writing keeps me thinking. Back in 1966 when we moved to Parkston, the Mitchell Daily Republic ran a weekly outdoor column called “Hooks & Shots” by a guy named Wes. At that time it occurred to me that I could write an outdoor column. Right now I’m hoping that some younger man or woman is thinking the same thing. Whoever you are, you’ll have some “big shoes to fill” as mine are size 17.

See you next week.