South Park's astir over bison slaughter

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Originally published 06:41 p.m., March 28, 2008
Updated 06:41 p.m., March 28, 2008

Photo by Barry Gutierrez

The heads of three bison lay on a flat bed truck at the Downare Ranch near Hartsel on March 28, 2008.

FAIRPLAY — It is whispered maybe a dozen times a day in this tiny, former gold mining town plopped in the middle of a lot of central Colorado nothingness.

It is a fairly odd statement that at first makes the head spin.

"The Indians did it."

It is always said in an under-the-breath, highly conspiratorial way, the speaker at first shifting his or her eyes this way and that, before leaning back and nodding.

"The Indians," they whisper, tapping your hand.

It is the talk of this town of 752 souls, the horrific slaughter two weeks ago of rancher Monte Downare's 32 bison by at least 14 men, the majority of whom were caught standing over or not far from their kills.

What appears clear, townsfolk and lawmen here say, is that the slaughter is but the latest chapter in the long-running feud between Monte Downare (pronounced Dawn-ARE-ray) and Texas high-tech exec Jeff Hawn, whose ranches abut each other southeast of Hartsel near here in southeastern Park County.

The hunters were staying in a barn, outbuildings and tent on the Hawn property. And they allegedly told the sheriff that they had been given permission to kill the bison, although it's not clear if they said who gave them the OK.

"The men who did this are lucky the sheriff, and not the men in here, caught them first," Duke Marsh, 68, bellows while standing in the middle of the crowded Silverheels Truck Stop just off Highway 285 near the entrance to the town.

"They would still be hanging by their (genitals)," he spits to the nodding approval of the others. "No feud should end with the killing of any man's livestock."

The Silverheels at mid-afternoon has become the town gathering spot, a place where the police chief and county undersheriff sit over coffee swapping police tales, occasionally sharing information on the slaughter with the locals.

It is, too, a place that is rife with rumor and half-truths, of tales that the shooters dropped piles of corn or other foodstuffs to lure the bison off the Downare ranch and into the killing zone, of one of the shooters racing into the herd on a snowmobile to make the animals run and make the kill at least a bit more sporting.

Presiding over it all is Timm Armstrong, 53, a local rancher who three years ago grew bored with simply running his 130 head of longhorn cattle, and built the Silverheels.

In town eight years now, he knows almost everyone, and they know him. He is easy to spot, dressing as he does as if he'd just walked off a cattle drive, his denim trousers held up by suspenders, his dusty cowboy hat framing his weathered face adorned with a long, thick and drooping moustache.

"The Downares are really good people," he says, repeating what everyone in the town says of the family that has ranched this part of Colorado for generations. "For whatever reason, they just couldn't or wouldn't keep their bison off Jeff Hawn's property. Still, that's no reason for any man to go on a killing spree."

Like everyone else in town, Timm Anderson knew of the long-running feud over the bison between the Downares and Jeff Hawn, which did reach the courthouse in the form of a lawsuit the Texan filed against the Downares just days before the slaughter.

"You know the worst thing about it?" said Timm Anderson, his eyes almost misty. "Almost every one of those cows they killed — I heard 29 of them — were about to calve. Those men wiped out an entire herd! Unforgivable is what it is."

It is not a far stretch to say that this is a town in grieving. A lot of folks here run their own, smaller ranches. They are people who are devoted to their animals. And they cannot imagine the Downares' grief.

"It's just damn wrong. You don't just shoot somebody's stock," says Cindy Newman, 50, who works the register at the Silverheels, and operates a 120-acre ranch with her husband on the south side of the Downare property.

Most folks here put the Downare family's bison herd at between 1,200 to 1,500 head. Cindy Newman knows the bison well, and not just because a dozen or so would often run through her fence and graze on her property.

"Trust me, if they decide they want on your property," she said, "nothing will stop them. I never once thought of getting my gun. And every time we called the family, they came right out.

And they paid to fix our fence."

She knows of the bison better than most because she has slammed into two of them over the past two years on her way to work.

"This year and last year," Cindy Newman explained. "The first one I hit, I spun him, and he went right through my truck's windshield. I got lucky and wasn't hurt. But Monte Downare, he paid to get the truck fixed. That's the kind of people we're talking about."

Of Jeff Hawn, no one ever remembers seeing him in town. Today, they all say, he would not be welcome.

"I don't know for certain that I would serve him," says Dave O'Bregan, 57, who five months ago opened O'Bregan's Pub, the only full-service bar in town, along with Leo's Liquors, which his wife, Brenda runs.

"I feel bad for the bison," Dave O'Bregan says. "And sure, I've heard the rumors. What I know is the Downares and Jeff Hawn didn't get along."

Brenda O'Bregan then repeats what I have heard all over town.

"Native Americans did it," she says. "That is the rumor."

The way the story goes, somebody hired a crew of Native American men to slaughter the bison on the belief that they have a Constitutional right to kill bison at any time of the year.

"I'm half Chippewa," says Tammi Castle, 40, an O'Bregan's server. "I've heard the rumor, too, and it's not what the law says. And besides, Native Americans would never do this. We revere the bison."

Interrupted during his coffee break at the Silverheels and asked about the rumor, Park County Undersheriff Monte Gore simply smiled.

"I am not saying anything about Native Americans. Not at this point."

It will be at least until next week before any decision on arrests and charges are considered against anyone involved, Monte Gore said, explaining the bison slaughter is a complex and intricate case that today is being investigated by four law enforcement agencies.

"I can tell you that we're going to go methodically and logically though this to bring those responsible to justice.

"It is just tragic," he later repeated over and over as he looked at pictures of the dead bison.

And yes, he said, deputies had been called out to the Hawn Ranch, where the bulk of the bison carcasses were found, on several occasions, most long before a Downare son made his 9-1-1 call on March 19.

No one, Monte Gore said, foresaw this.

Jeff Hawn, he said, was not on his property at the time of the bison killings.

One other thing, he said, attempting to counter the resident rumor mill on the slaughter.

"They were allowed to harvest some of the meat," Monte Gore said of 14 gunmen. "A determination was made to allow them to take the meat, rather than allow it to just sit there and go to waste."

Yet in the absence of arrests, charges and a sense of resolution, a town rages.

"I was told at least two of the shooters were Indians," a livid Bob Agosti, 60, said. A long-time plumbing contractor, virtually everyone in this town knows him.

"I'm telling you, the shooters weren't locals," he spits. "Nobody up here would have shot another man's bison like that. These men weren't hunters, they were assassins."

In many ways, people here are at least silently praying that it was outsiders – Native American or not – who did what they consider to be unconscionably barbaric.

It violated the only true code they live by up here, they said. A man's livestock is his treasure, to be safeguarded almost as closely as his own offspring.

Brenda O'Bregan, standing alone behind the counter of Leo's Liquors, across a hallway separating her from the pub where her husband was still holding forth, put it this way:

"We want to know what they are going to do with these men because it is a big topic in this town. Even the kids are talking about it.

"It is why I think the county is taking so long with it. They know we're angry about it. As much as we want a resolution, we don't want them to do anything to screw it up and let these men go free."

johnsonw@rockymountainnews.com or 303-954-2763.