WIND RIVER RESERVATION — The shot rang out, and the buffalo collapsed on a slope of silvery green sagebrush still damp from the previous night’s rain.
The rest of the herd, in a field below, startled and then began milling. The lumbering animals slowly organized, moving toward the fallen bull. They surrounded the body, nudging and prodding it as if they were urging the bull to stand back up and join them.
“This is the most heartfelt part,” Jackie White, Food Bank of Wyoming’s tribal relations specialist and a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, said from her vantage point in a nearby truck. This is how buffalo behave after a harvest, she said. It’s like they are mourning…