IN SEARCH OF CANADA’S BIG 5
There’s a painting by Frederic Remington – an artist known for his impressions of the Old West – of a herd of bison being led by a bull. “That never woulda happened,” says retired biologist and wildlife guide Pat Rousseau. “The females make all the decisions – where you eat, where you lay down, who babysits.”
Pat is leading chapter one of my summer mission through the province of Manitoba to see the ‘big five’ – a term famously coined by big-game hunters in Africa, now used to market wildlife experiences across the globe – and we’ve just got our first tick. Metres from the minibus are 20 members of the 40-strong plains bison herd that resides at Riding Mountain National Park – all shaggy coats, humped shoulders and low-slung heads. Youngsters jostle in preparation for the autumn rut; a mother tends to her calf; a male rubs its head roughly against a rock. It’s a microcosm of bison life as it existed on the plains generations ago, when the population sat so comfortably in its tens of millions that people would shoot them from passing trains, just for fun.
That the bison are in a drive-through enclosure
