AMERICAN ALBUM : Where buffalo still roam, and so do hunters : Game officials call the lottery kill a harvest. Bison end up as roasts, raven food and rugs.

The arrival of the ravens is the first sign that the buffalo hunt is under way. They circle high above this sweeping northern Arizona rangeland as the three hunters close in on the herd. But the big birds stay well back, knowing their time will come after the hunters butcher their kills.

“The ravens love this,” says Tom Britt, regional supervisor for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “As soon as we leave, they’ll go to work on the gut pile.”

For three weeks every October, hunters descend on the Raymond Ranch Wildlife Area, 30 miles east of Flagstaff, to take part in one of the country’s last public hunts of the American bison, commonly called buffalo.

The state-owned Raymond herd, which numbers about 100 head, runs on 15,000 acres of brittle grass at the south end of the Colorado Plateau.

Getting a permit for this once-in-a-lifetime hunt requires some luck. Game and Fish selects hunters in a random draw. Fees range from $243 for a yearling to $753 for an adult bull.

In spite of the cost, the hunt is so popular that the state usually receives 10 times more applicants than it has permits.

“I feel privileged just to get a permit,” says Bob Mauser, 69, a retired Air Force colonel from Sun City, Ariz. “Where else can I go to shoot a buffalo? And the rates are reasonable.”

But what takes place at the Raymond Ranch bears no resemblance to the romantic buffalo hunts that live in the American imagination.

Game and Fish rangers call this a culling hunt. That means the shooters get as close as possible to the docile herd, usually well within 100 yards, and fire.

Even a beginning hunter would need a malfunctioning weapon to miss. “The only way you won’t get a buffalo is if you don’t show up, or if you’ve got so much adrenaline pumping you can’t hold the rifle steady,” says ranch manager Earl Breese.

Hunter John Fisher of Mesa, Ariz., acknowledges that the kill is less than sporting but says it’s a “necessary evil” to keep the herd in balance with the land.

Without a regular harvest, hunters and rangers say, the herd would double in size within three years, which would create a food shortage and cause the animals to break out of range fences to forage.

“If animal rights activists had their way, they’d stop the shooting,” says hunter John Tharp, 43, owner of a Phoenix automotive repair shop. “Then there’d be overpopulation and everything out here would starve to death. That’s more inhumane than pulling the trigger.”

In past years, activists have protested the hunt as an unnecessary slaughter. “Bless the Beasts and Children,” a 1971 film based on Glendon Swarthout’s novel, did much to fuel the anger. The movie showed jarring, real-life footage of Arizona hunters lining up and gunning down the animals as they ran from a corral.

In the late ‘70s, activists monitored the hunt in an effort to get it stopped. But the protests ended after 1981 and things have been quiet ever since.

Britt defends the hunt as the best way to thin the herd and raise badly needed funds--$13,000 this year alone. The money helps Game and Fish achieve its chief goal of maintaining the Raymond range as a winter home for antelope, elk and deer.

“I realize this isn’t a pursuit-type hunt, but the kill is only part of it,” says Britt. “There’s also skinning and quartering the animal. I say enjoy it. If you want to be romantic about it, you could say this is your Pleistocene experience.”

Breese does everything he can to make the kills clean and quick. Before a hunt earlier this month, he tested the three shooters and their rifles on a firing range behind the ranch house. By finding out the skill of each shooter, Breese can gauge how close he needs to get before authorizing the shot.

The kills take place under his tight control. Breese piles the three hunters into his pickup and rumbles over the rugged landscape toward the herd, trying not to spook them.

One by one, Breese summons the hunters from the truck. They take up shooting positions on the ground, balancing their rifle barrels in the crook of a bipod to ensure steady aim.

Breese stands at the hunter’s shoulder describing the animal he wants shot. He talks the shooters through each kill, saying things like: “You have an ear shot. Do you want to take it?”

But this day’s hunt is more difficult than most. The front cow keeps eyeing the approaching hunters and leading her herd farther and farther away. The first kill takes a full hour. The last two happen faster, but neither animal dies in the hoped-for single shot.

The second one, Fisher’s kill, goes down and up a few times until Breese has to finish the job at close range. Tharp takes four shots to drop the third.

The hunters, usually accompanied by friends and family, butcher their kills on the spot. They work slowly, careful not to damage the day’s big prizes--about 175 pounds of meat from each animal, skulls and especially the fine hides.

“I’m going to make a rug out of mine,” says Fisher, 51, as he watches his three sons and grandson skin their buffalo. “But knowing the wife, she’ll probably make me keep it in the closet.”

By the time the hunters are done, the kill sites swarm with flies and soon the ravens land.