A Full Range

You may have heard about the comeback of the bison from the turn of the century, when the only place the buffalo seemed to roam was on nickels. And you may have heard about the popularity of buffalo burgers, steaks, hot dogs and even buffalo pizza.

“The great shaggy beasts are rising into national consciousness again, and they have a lot of helpers--some motivated by fun, some by profit and some by a sense of spiritual or ecological propriety,” writes Bay Area ecologist Ernest Callenbach, whose “Bring Back the Buffalo!” was published in January by Island Press. The buffalo, he writes, “is becoming reestablished, both in imagery and in fact.”

In the process, buffalo-fueled products are appearing in restaurants, frozen food display cases and boutiques, or on greeting cards, postage stamps, belt buckles and bolo ties. Buffalo businesses have their own World Wide Web sites. Indeed, Callenbach, citing the low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-calorie attributes of buffalo meat, writes: “A ‘McBuff’ burger may not be far away.”

As consumer demand spurs the growth industry of buffalo ranching, byproducts increasingly are being made from hides, bones and meat, once considered commercially worthless. And now comes the latest carrier of buffalo spirit of the moment: shoes thundering across the retail landscape.

Harrison Trask of Bozeman, Mont., discovered that when buffalo hide is tanned properly, it is “soft and mellow, but strong as iron.” This makes ideal shoes, says Trask, extolling the virtues of “America’s original leather--field tested by Native Americans for over 500 years.”

Three years ago, when Trask was fly-fishing in Yellowstone National Park, he saw a buffalo herd along the Madison River. He wondered if anyone was manufacturing shoes from bison hides. Says Tad W. Swanson, a vice president for H.S. Trask & Co.: “It was a baffling contradiction why the best leather around was not being used for shoes.”

Trask had several hides tanned. “It came out so soft you couldn’t make a pair of shoes,” Swanson says. “Nobody knew how to tan it.”

Trask went to a shoe show in Germany where he was talking with someone about the bison, distinctly North American, though often referred to similarly as the Asian buffalo. The man said he had a friend who might have a tanning recipe. Indeed, in a box in a centuries-old tannery, a recipe was found, perhaps dating from the 19th century when hides were brought from America.

Trask, who was a Reebok regional sales manager, started his own company in 1994. Now H.S. Trask & Co. shoes, designed mainly for men, compete in the “rugged casuals” market. Priced between $120 and $200, the shoes are sold in upscale stores from coast to coast, including locally at Nordstrom, Johnston & Murphy, and Boulevard Footwear & Bootery. By fall there will be 30 styles, including hiking boots, sandals, Oxfords with lug soles and a modified Doc Martens look.

Jeff Nichols, manager of Pasadena’s Boulevard Footwear & Bootery, which also has stores in Santa Monica and Newport Beach, says that within three months of getting the first batch of Trasks in October, his store had nearly sold out. “If you could do that with every shoe, you’d have a very profitable store.”

Boulevard salesman Mark Throckmorton says the novelty makes the shoes fun to sell. With some customers, Throckmorton shares stories of his youth in Kansas, where old-timers handed down family stories about those who saw buffalo herds so large they took three days to pass one spot.

Harrison Trask counts on this link with an American icon to boost the company’s sales to 200,000 pairs annually by 2000.

To a lesser degree, other bison byproducts--such as skulls, jawbones, vests and even dog food--are becoming available.

Since November, Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills has carried briefcases and purses, handmade in Italy and distributed by the Denver Buffalo Co. “It’s one of those items you have to touch and feel. Then you fall in love with it,” says Ed Morrissey, a Denver Buffalo vice president. Briefcases cost $650 to $800; purses, $250 to $750.

Buffalo skulls, at $360 each, and mounted heads, which sell for up $4,600, are sold by mail order. For the less extravagant consumer, the company also offers hickory-smoked jerky and sausages to stores nationwide. Its buff dogs and buff burgers are sold at Colorado professional sports events.

The Denver-based firm, which has a hotel and two restaurants, bills itself as having the “largest buffalo marketing organization worldwide”--all started by multimillionaire Will McFarlane, who says he’s doing for the buffalo what Apple’s Steven Jobs did for computers.

No less ambitious is Thundering Herd Buffalo, based in Reno. The husband-and-wife team of Ann and Alan Hutchinson operates a mail-order catalog. For $127, including overnight shipping, they sell a 10-pound sampler of sirloin roast, lean steaks, stew meat and burgers.

In magazines such as Smithsonian, the firm promotes buffalo “robes,” hides with the wool still on. Those sell for $895. “They’re really neat to curl up in when you’re watching a video late at night,” Alan Hutchinson says.

Thundering Herd also sells saddlebags, pillows, checkbook covers, wallets, vests, moccasins and bone jewelry. And at the high end, there’s the three-quarter-length coat with fur collar and beadwork, designed by a Sonoma County furrier. It sells for $3,000. “He’s done many for Hollywood stars and country music singers,” Hutchinson says.

“It’s a developing market for buffalo products,” says Rusty Seedig of Denver Buffalo. “First you educate the consumer that it’s OK to eat buffalo. That it’s not extinct, not endangered. That’s the biggest hurdle.”

Far from endangered, perhaps 200,000 bison roam from Florida to Catalina Island. In San Diego County, the Star B Ranch, with 65 in its herd in Ramona, distributes meat to 95 Southern California retail stores, including Pavilions, Bristol Farms and Mrs. Gooch’s, and to 50 restaurants.

“Supply does not match demand,” says Bud Flocchini, chairman of the National Bison Assn., which held its annual meeting in Denver last month and served bison prime rib to 600 conventioneers. Flocchini’s family runs Durham Meat Co. in San Jose. The firm has a Gillette, Wyo., ranch with 4,000 bison, second only in size to cable mogul Ted Turner’s herd, kept on a handful of huge ranches.

Interestingly, as more buffalo products are developed, some Native Americans are benefiting.

Several tribes supply animals for Trask shoes as well as for meat and other items. Dennis Sexhus, who heads the North American Bison Coop in New Rockford, N.D., says: “This boom has been good for the Native Americans.”

More than a century after Native Americans on the Great Plains relied on every scrap of buffalo to feed, clothe, house and inspire them, now--though in slightly different ways--Sexhus says, “virtually the entire buffalo is being used.”

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Rounding Up All the Facts

* Estimates vary, but it’s believed that between 60 million and 75 million buffalo roamed the plains of North America when European settlers arrived. By the 1890s, after extensive hunting, only 800 to 1,000 remained.

* Today, between 150,000 and 200,000 buffalo are on ranches, public and private lands, and in zoos in Canada and all 50 states of the U.S.

* Bison bison is the scientific name for the North American buffalo. It is distinct from the European wood bison, the water buffalo of Asia and the African buffalo.

* Bison weigh up to 2,000 pounds, are up to 10 feet in length, live 40 to 50 years and can run up to 35 mph.

* The buffalo nickel was minted between 1913 and 1938.

* The fiber structure of buffalo hide is much looser than cowhide. Thus in tanning, bison is firmed up and cowhide is softened.

Sources: H.S. Trask & Co., National Bison Assn. and “Bring Back the Buffalo!” by Ernest Callenbach.