‘Hide Hunters’ is the third book by Steven Rinella and Randall Williams.

In the January meeting of the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, the National Park Service’s new Kelly Parcel was added to one of two wild bison management areas in the state; the only designated areas in the Wyoming where bison are officially designated as wildlife.

After a protracted, years-long debate, Grand Teton National Park purchased the Kelly Parcel from the State of Wyoming for $100 million on Dec. 27, 2024. Of that, the National Park Service paid $62.5 million, with the Service’s foundation raising the balance. The addition to the Jackson Wild Bison Management Area means hunting of the controversial species on the Kelly Parcel is now open for seasonal harvests.

At the same time, the Commission and the Wyoming Board of Livestock have negotiated a regulation to identify all ranch-raised bison with ear tags. Some see the new regulations as steps forward for both hunters and ranchers. However, others see regulations to “box in” the animals running contrary to the species’ needs.

They determined all bison in the state, excluding wild bison found in the Absaroka Wild Bison Management Area and the Jackson Wild Bison Herd Area, are designated as privately owned or bison running at large.

Bison (aka buffalo to a large portion of the country’s population) is the largest land-dwelling mammal in North America and serves as the official state mammal. They are also considered tasty and lean and high in protein as well as an iconic species to hunt. If you’re lucky, that is. Only 69 licenses were issued in 2025 (six for nonresident hunters). The previous year 65 bison were harvested, all from the Jackson herd. Success in the area is considered very high.

During the mandated public comment period for the designation change only three comments were submitted, two in support of the changes, and one opposed to hunting who believed the bison should roam freely.

The thought of free-roaming wildlife of that size and in need of grass, competing with cattle, isn’t acceptable to most stock growers who worry about the spread of disease to their livestock. The biggest concern is the transmission of brucellosis from wild bison to cattle, which can lead to abortion in cattle and cause significant economic losses to the ranching industry.

One of the top celebrity hunters and conservationists over the past 20 years has been Steven Rinella, who has been a strong advocate for free-ranging bison on public land in the West. He believes wild bison should have free space in the West on public lands with populations controlled by hunting. He knows that it can mean increased conflicts with agricultural interests, but feels the massive animals deserve a place on the landscape.

Culture Club

The subject of free roaming bison came up during a Cody Culture Club program featuring celebrity hunter Rinella (best known for promoting ethical hunting, wildlife conservation and field to table cooking shows) and editor Randall Williams. The two have joined forces to write three books on the history of the species. “Hide Hunters,” debuting earlier this year, is the third volume of a series called “MeatEaters American History.”

Rinella said the future of wild bison herds and hunting opportunities is in Alaska. He touted four relatively new herds using bison from Montana and several new herds near the Yukon of Wood Bison. Yet, here in the lower 48, he said bison aren’t treated like other wildlife.

“A grizzly bear can move from one jurisdiction to the next, and it stays wildlife. A wolf can move from one jurisdiction to the next, and its wildlife, moose, bighorns, mountain goats, elk. [Most] can’t name a native animal that can’t move across jurisdictions,” Rinella said. “There’s one exception; it’s the American buffalo. When that animal walks across that invisible [border] line, it becomes errant livestock.”

Rinella said there’s enough habitat in Yukon flats for a herd that rivals the size of Yellowstone’s approximately 5,000 bison roaming free in the park. “And these aren’t ones that are like hounded by tourists and park rangers, like so many gnats,” he said.

His hope for bison is similar, but not in lock-step with the single commentator seeking to allow bison free range in Wyoming. The difference between the two, of course, is the famous hunter would like to see more opportunities to harvest bison. Rinella’s final statement before opening the meeting up for questions was, “We need to get more Alaska [mindsets] and less Montana and Wyoming mindsets, in my mind.”

There are about 400,000 privately-owned domestic bison now in the U.S. In Wyoming, where the largest privately-owned herd in America exists, bison are one of the very few wildlife species allowed to be raised for profit. Elk, native fish and greater sage grouse are also on the list.

Rinella, host of MeatEater, is a strong proponent of bison conservation, emphasizing the restoration of wild, free-ranging herds and ethical hunting as a tool for stewardship. Through his first book, “American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon,” he highlights the historical efforts to save the species and advocates for maintaining their ecological role in the wild. Before the mid 1800s, it is estimated that 30 to 60 million bison roamed the plains of the United States.

Third bison book

Rinella’s and William’s third book, titled “Hide Hunters” and released 18 years after the first book in the series, seeks to help understand the effects of hide hunting for leather beginning in about 1865. Many see the slaughter of millions of wild bison as an attempt to starve out native tribes in efforts to control the West. Yet, Rinella said most hide hunters were desperate for work after the country was decimated by the Civil War.

“You can’t really tell the story of these hide hunters without factoring in the effect that the Civil War had on their lives,” he said. “When you get into these stories, and this is not to forgive them, but how much expectation can you have of people that are 18-20, one or both parents dead, and zero money?”

At the time, there were more than 700,000 dead combatants, 50,000 dead civilians, 60,000 amputees. 8% of the nation’s white men aged 13 to 43 are killed in the South and about 200,000 people who lost their homes, which is sort of a displacement that you don’t see up until the Great Depression, he said.

“You read the stories of these men and try to understand them as individuals, and you just can’t get away from how the Civil War moved them around the country and made them make some of the decisions that they did,” he said.

Rinella was interviewed for Ken Burns’ epic documentary called “The American Buffalo.” He said one of the disagreements was with the story line, which he said villainized hide hunters.

“One of the things I said when I met with [Burns’ team], ‘You’re villainizing the hide hunters.’ Years without any attention paid to what they were coming from, [Burns] kind of treats them like these people were motivated by evil.”

The timing of the slaughter also coexisted with railroads crossing the west, Rinella said.

“When we built railroads across North America after the Civil War, the tables quickly turned against bison,” he said. Market hunters quickly wiped out the great herds, shipping the hides east to be used by industry for straps and belts. By the 1880s, only a few scattered animals survived in the backcountries of Canada and in Yellowstone National Park.

No transmission

There are approximately 500–600 wild, free-ranging bison living outside of Yellowstone National Park but within Wyoming, primarily comprising the Jackson bison herd. While Yellowstone itself holds roughly 4,500–5,000 bison, those that migrate north into Montana are frequently culled due to brucellosis concerns according to Wyoming Wildlife Advocates.

The nongovernmental group states over 10,300 bison have been killed since 1986 as they crossed the northern border of Yellowstone into Montana. Fear of disease drives the ongoing culling of hundreds of these animals every year, the group said.

“Nevertheless, no transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle has ever been detected,” they reported. “Epidemiological investigations in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) have identified elk, not bison, as the primary source of brucellosis infections in cattle. yet they are tolerated in large numbers,” they said in a report.