Our neighbors warned against our getting involved with bison. So intense was their concern that a delegation came by to visit about it. Earnestly, they explained that they worried that, even if after five years we seemed to have gotten pretty good at the rudiments of managing a ranch, we were getting in over our heads with this buffalo idea. Our first calf was born on Mother's Day of 1996. We had been on our place for eight years, and in spite of ourselves, we had become ranchers.