Buffalo Doctor : In a Catalina Island Ritual, It’s Round ‘Em Up, Check ‘Em Out

A cacophony of clanging metal shattered the calm at Santa Catalina Island’s working ranch before the buffalo cow, with a low grunt, gave in to the grip of the aging squeeze chute.

Her chocolate mane was matted with burrs, her eyes afflicted with a touch of infection that a ranch hand tended with a casual toss of “pink eye” powder.

In a nearby corral, a dozen waiting bulls ran nervously in tight circles, raising a slow-moving dust cloud into the stillness from the hay-strewn ground. It is time once again for the thinning of Catalina’s buffalo herd, a regular ritual on an island with no predators and only so much brittle grass to go around.

But before this group of 55 wild bulls, cows and young heifers can board a barge for their new home on a Montana ranch, Dr. Matt Wyatt must tag them, poke them with needles to test for disease, and check suspect females for pregnancy, a condition that can add a nice fee onto the price of a cow.

“This one’s pregnant,” Wyatt said with a slight grimace as he groped inside a 785-pound cow for the give-away suction nodules that attach the fetus to the placenta.

The 38-year-old veterinarian, who splits his time between clinics in Avalon and Anaheim, did not bring gloves when he made the trip to Middle Ranch last week and had to perform the procedure bare-armed.

By federal regulation, Wyatt also had to test for tuberculosis and brucellosis, a bacteria that can ravage a herd because it attacks the reproductive system, causing spontaneous abortion, low fertility and vaginal infections among cows.

Clad in jeans and cowboy boots, Wyatt set up his instant vet station on a rickety card table inside the gates of the corral contraption, designed and built two decades ago by a man named Bob Gatey with pieces of the old Avalon pier.

When Wyatt arrived, the animals were already separated into groups, ready to be coerced into the squeeze chute by half a dozen helpers who hoot, throw their arms skyward, and rattle their “bull-sticks”--plastic poles with old soda cans on the end.

“Cha! Cha!” yelled Vern Lopez, 48, dancing on the gang plank above a corral in an effort to scare the first buffalo into the weighing chamber.

From there, hollers and foot-stomping frightened the animal down a narrow run, and it lurched unwittingly into the chute. Frank Minuto, 24, slammed the metal doors behind her. He and Dave Davis, 42, snapped the front doors shut around her neck, and Minuto pulled down hard to close the arms of the chute firmly around her.

Within seconds, Wyatt clipped a tag through her right ear, drew blood from a vein under her tail for the brucellosis test, and pierced a quick TB shot into the fatty pad above her tail. Then came the pregnancy check before Wyatt hosed off his arm and prepared for the next buffalo.

“I don’t think I want to eat lunch with you,” quipped Harrison (Bud) Baker Jr., 70, a friend of Wyatt and an island old-timer whose mother bought one of Catalina’s first cottages from chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. in 1921.

Since 1919, the Wrigley family has owned the island through the Catalina Island Co. But in 1975, the company deeded more than 86% of the island to the nonprofit Catalina Conservancy to preserve and restore plants and animals that inhabit the 21-mile-long island.

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About a dozen buffalo were first brought to the island by filmmakers for the 1924 silent movie “The Vanishing American.” A few years later, more were shipped in from their traditional Great Plains home to strengthen the island herd.

The herd now numbers about 250, and should eventually be thinned to 125 to ensure the island’s grassy slopes of oak scrub, ironwood, prickly pear and sage do not erode from overgrazing, said Herman Saldana, 56, an island native who now manages the buffalo herd for the conservancy’s Middle Ranch.

Just last month, Saldana said, the conservancy shipped three young buffalo to a mom and pop store and gas station in Tonopah, Nev.

“They’re going to use them for a roadside attraction,” he said. “The place runs on two generators. They figure this might get people to stop and buy gas.”

The buffalo shipments are usually made about twice a year, Saldana said. At the height of California’s drought in the summer of 1990, however, the conservancy shipped as many as 20 buffalo a week to a ranch in Oklahoma. Some are used for breeding; others end up as buffalo burgers, an eventuality Saldana prefers not to dwell on.

When the 55 animals gathered and tested by Wyatt last week are shipped off to the Montana ranch some time in the next 40 days, the buyers will bring in four new bulls to help diversify the island’s gene pool, Saldana said.

It took the staff at Middle Ranch about a month and a half to round up the Montana-bound buffalo, laying down sheets of sweet hay as bait and waiting for small groups to wander down the valley toward the ranch’s corral system.

“It’s like it goes out on the buffalo wire,” said Wyatt. “Pretty soon, they all start coming in.”

The day grows hotter as the sun burns through the island cloud cover, and yellow jackets fill the air. “Come on down,” Minuto hollers in jest to the next buffalo in line. “You’re the next contestant.”

Age is figured from horn-size, and Minuto gives a nod of respect to one 8-year-old cow who is so agitated the men cover her head with a towel in an effort to calm her. “This is where they got the idea for Harley handlebars,” Minuto said, giving her horns an affectionate clasp.

Lopez perches on a hay bale at the rusting scale, his graying ponytail protruding from a dusty red baseball cap, and calls out the weight and approximate age of each animal.

When he gets to one 700-pound bull, the action picks up. Instead of taking off toward an open corral when he bolts from the squeeze chute, the bull turns around, doubling back into the work area, up-ending the card table covered with blood samples and scattering them along with reports and dozens of covered syringes. The bull’s mad spin sends Wyatt darting behind a metal ladder for cover.

“That’s the first time a bull’s tipped over all my stuff,” Wyatt said, more amused than disturbed by the close brush.

Wyatt worked as a ranch hand in his native Oregon as a teen and later joined the U.S. Army as a veterinary technician, taking care of cats and dogs on army bases in Maryland and Kentucky. But it wasn’t until he bought Avalon’s tiny two-room veterinary clinic three years ago that he got his hands on some bison.

Wyatt also recently tended to Fauna, a blind and aging fox who lived near the Catalina airport and underwent laser surgery for an ear tumor at UC Irvine’s Beckman Laser Institute. The surgery was successful, but Wyatt had to put Fauna to sleep a few weeks ago when she started turning circles and walking with a tilted head, signs that the tumor may have spread to her brain.

Over the next 40 days, the Middle Ranch workers will cajole, holler at and chase the buffalo one more time to herd them into a trailer for the trip down the winding island road. They will then board a barge waiting in high tide.

The animals will probably fetch about $1.15 a pound, plus extra for every pregnant cow, said Saldana.

“Just about every one of them drops a calf every year,” he said. “That’s why we have to keep track of them.”