Behind The Scenes: Freedom To Roam
With our latest trip to Montana being one that left an impression on us, we felt it was only fitting to offer a sneak peak to the piece we wrote for VAHNA. We would highly recommend heading over their way to pick up an issue to learn more about the experience. But until you get that issue please enjoy our BTS journal:
Ironically, I was on vacation in Hawaii when the Iron and Resin team first pitched me on a “Montana trip.” In general, any excuse to get on a plane and go somewhere I’ve never been is exciting to me, but thinking about snowy mountain peaks and bone-chilling winds while sitting on a beach felt a little funny.
Of course, I said “Yes,” because nobody in their right mind would say “No.” And so, as soon as I got home, I repacked my bag, booked a flight and began frantically Googling “weather forecast in Plains, MT.”
By the time we actually made it to Montana, my tan had long faded but my head was spinning with all the mythology and lore surrounding the vast American West. I’ll admit, I’d just finished Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga, so cowboys, six shooters and “Wide open spaces” were fresh on my mind.
I rendezvoused with the Iron and Resin video crew at PDX barely an hour before. It was the first time I’d met Matthew, Mason and “Larry” (Noah), but I could tell they were buzzing with as much excitement as I was. Waiting for our plane to Missoula to board, we huddled around our piles of camera bags, fidgeting and grinning. As we were a pack of California desk jockeys, we were in for some serious culture shock.
The project we were about to tackle would be a close collaboration with Hightail Ranch and Vahna Magazine — the iconic quarterly which tells “stories about motorcycles, the places they take us and the people who ride them” — that would draw us deep into the Montana wilderness to a modest bison ranch, where a man named Jon corrals his 250-head herd on dirt bikes. (Yes, that’s a real sentence.) I remember the whole premise feeling completely unreal.
As Hightail is a regenerative ranching operation, the story we were setting out to tell was to be multifaceted. Not only is Jon committed to preserving bison, which are considered a “near threatened” species, but he is also deeply invested in restoring the similarly fragile grasslands they graze.
As bison are — to understate — an unwieldy animal, his operation prefers dirt bikes over horses, which are slower and, well, prone to being gored. To be totally frank, I’d never seen a bison up close, I’d never ridden a dirt bike and I’d only ever driven through Montana.
After a bit of complication locating our rental car and a last-minute meal at Taco Bell, we loaded up on snacks and cigarettes and headed for the ranch. That first night, we wouldn’t get to see much. The sun had already set by the time we arrived, but even in the pitch black, every one of my senses was piqued. There were no highrises or apartment complexes to obstruct the whistling winds. There was no light pollution to dim the vibrant starscape above. Before settling into bed, Noah and I sat on the porch of our cabin trying in vain to take photos of the night sky with our iPhones. I was a long way from Maui, that’s for sure.
That first day, everything came into focus. We met Jon, who was just as grizzly as he’d appeared on Zoom. We met the ranch hands, friends and family who had gathered at Hightail for the “superbowl” of ranching, also known as the yearly roundup. And, while our heads were still spinning, we all began to make sense of the place we’d just been plopped into.
That morning, we also caught our first glimpse of the herd, which was grazing peacefully on a faroff hill. I remember the four of us pointing and giggling like school kids on a field trip. From that point of view, our little slice of Montana looked like a landscape painting. Golden yellow grasses, shivering in the wind. Hazy mountain peaks in the distance. Baby blue sky above. I have never felt more out of place in my life.
After we made a plan for the day, Thom, Iron and Resin’s CEO, and his wife Laura fed us breakfast and we dove right in. Our first shot of the project would take place at the corral. You’ve likely seen one of these before: Big pen, into which the ranchers gather a group of bison; a narrower chute, where a handful are separated from the group; and an even narrower section where individual bison are isolated, immobilized and “tagged.” While most ranches corral their herd to brand new cattle and perform routine health inspections, Jon uses his to attach sensors to each bison’s ear, in order to collect health data and track their movements. All in all, pretty high tech.
On paper, it all makes good sense. Considering none of the bison want to be there and each of them weigh just under a ton, executing the task of separating and controlling them is chaos incarnate. Just to isolate a handful of bison from the wider group requires at least three to four hands in the corral, waving their arms wildly and making grunting noises. But even then, “safety in numbers” isn’t a thing. The moment an impatient bull or protective cow breaks off from the group, the only thing to do is run for the walls and climb as quickly as possible.
For the first day, most of the Iron and Resin crew focused on capturing both images and footage of this process, which kept us on the sidelines—Noah running around with his camera saddle and Mason affixed to his tripod. By day two, however, we realized it was time to get our hands dirty.
My first time in the ring, I was pretty sure bystanders could hear my heart thundering in my chest. It was a rush like none other. There are moments when the bison gather into a gallop and kick up enough dust to blot out the sun. Up close, witnessing the raw power of those animals is dizzying, intoxicating. Of course, I’ve been to plenty of zoos, where even bigger beasts are sedated to the point of dormancy. But here — especially after you’ve tagged one and released them back into the herd — these animals are filled to the brim with all the fire and fury of the natural world.
Once I’d had my fair share of Mexican standoffs in the corral, I hopped to the other side of the fence and told a wide-eyed Matthew something along the lines of “holy shit, right?”
Later that day, the gravity of the danger of it all materialized. While Mason and I were both perched on the top of the steel fence line, we watched a massive bull trapped in the chute with a handful of calves. The longer it was in the pen, the more furious it became. Eventually, it started slamming its horns into the walls, kicking them with its hind legs and, unfortunately, goring a few of the calves. Once we were sure the worse-off calf was too far gone and would need to be put down, Mason and I looked at each other with a combination of fascination and horror in our eyes.
Reluctantly, the ranch hands cleared the bull and the other calves from the chute, and Jon hopped in with his .45 in hand. Only a few feet away, Mason knelt with his camera and captured Jon doing what needed to be done. My ears were ringing for the rest of the day.
Jon explained to me later that there is no domesticating bison. The best a rancher can hope to do is control the environment around them (i.e. fences, corrals), but even then, bison have a tendency to resist those attempts. Another day, a particularly angry bull busted through a wooden gate that took at least five of us, grunting and heaving, to raise back up. The great irony of herding them with dirt bikes over horses is that — to my utter disbelief — bison are still quicker.
During one of my favorite moments of the trip, we had relocated our crew to a higher point on the hillside to push the rest of the herd into the corral for another day of tagging. The sun had just begun to slip beneath the horizon, so the grass was flaxen yellow and the clouds were smouldering red. While four or five of the ranch hands on dirt bikes moved along the highest border, pushing the bison toward us, Mason, Matthew and I sat near the bottom in the four-wheeler we’d been lent, our jaws on the ground. Though it was only half the herd barreling toward us, that mass of bushy brown bodies looked like a wall of medieval cavalry at full charge. At that point, whatever bravery or bravado you think you have evaporates.
Just before they reached us, we spun around and punched on the gas to try and match pace, Mason hanging out the passenger seat with his camera in hand and Matthew perched in the rear, while I drove the three of us right through the center of the herd at full speed. Our engine groaned as it struggled to keep up, but those bison on either side of us, eyes fixed ahead, looked like they were out on an evening jog. With their tongues out, they zoomed right past us. From Noah’s vantage about a mile away, manning the drone that zipped above our heads, the herd appeared to glide across the plains in concert like a school of fish or a flock of birds. Reviewing the footage that night, we all realized just how tiny we were in comparison.
Capturing the footage we needed to tell the complete story of this place was a struggle, to be sure. Coming into the project, the question we spent the most time asking each other was “What the hell is this place?” A few days in, that question had changed to “How do we help people understand how important this place is?” After the events of most days, after a few beers and good laughs, we would regroup in our cabin, sit in a circle and repeat these questions over and over again.
Looking back, I realize that the best anyone can hope for with a project of this scale is that it sheds light on a part of the world that few people know exist.
For so many people, Montana is just a name on a map; the vast bison herds that used to roam American plains a distant casualty of colonization’s past; and those rich grasslands remain the same boundless resource Europeans first encountered when they arrived on North American shores. I can only tell you that none of that is true. With the film Iron and Resin produced, we’re able to give you a glimpse into the wild world of the modern American West and begin to make the case for how important the work Jon and his team does. But to fully understand how stunning Montana is up close, you’ll have to book a flight yourself.
I will say, if there’s one thing Westerns get wrong, it’s how action-packed they depict the work of ranching to be. In reality, tending fence line and studying sustainable rangeland management is pretty damn dull. The only real “villains” out there are irresponsible farmers and unchecked developers. The good guys, though? Those are real. Every day, ranchers (and tallgrass prairie science nerds) like Jon do the dirty work of sustainable ranching to put food on people’s tables in a way that restores the land rather than deplete it.
Creative Direction & Production: Matthew Linman
Director, Editor, Cinematographer: Mason Charles
Camera Operator & Producer: Noah Culver
Photographer: John Ryan Hebert
Writer: Justin Duyao