Company brings back buffalo to Buncombe pastures

LEICESTER, N.C. (AP) – The bull bison, known as “1683” by its tagged ear, topped out at more than a ton. It edged its massive horned head over the bed of the Ford pickup, its long tongue seeking the treats Frankie King shelled out from a bag.

“They don’t really like you messing with their heads, but you can’t help it. They’re just so majestic,” said King, patting the beast’s shaggy head. “Just be careful, if he jostles his head, you can find yourself on the other side of the truck,” he warned.

Buffalo once roamed North Carolina and the rest of North America by the millions before European settlers came to the continent and hunted the herds nearly to extinction. The last wild buffalo was reportedly shot near Asheville around 1780, but King and his family have brought the emblematic American animal back to Buncombe County pastures – and local dinner tables.

King’s company, Carolina Bison, boasts the largest herd of buffalo in the Southeast with nearly 500 head. After landing a contract to supply Earthfare, Carolina Bison has seen explosive growth, harvesting about 14,000 pounds weekly to supply customers looking for a healthier alternative to beef.

Sales were up 300 percent last year and the company will likely see $3 million in revenue, according to Dr. Frank King, the company’s founder, speaking at the recent Venture Local conference in Asheville.

“We’re likely to double that growth in the next year.”

The elder King, a homeopathic doctor, became interested in buffalo in the 1980s, especially in the healthy aspects of the meat. Buffalo is lower in cholesterol, fat and calories and higher in protein than beef and salmon. Plains Indians of the 18th century, whose diet centered on the buffalo and its myriad products, grew taller and lived longer than most people of that time.

King started with about 16 breeders in Ohio, then moved down to Asheville in 1989, setting up his homeopathic pharmaceutical company, King Bio. He brought the buffalo with him, buying up pasture land in Leicester.

Frankie King, 26, grew up with the buffalo. It wasn’t until middle school or high school at Merrimon Christian Academy that he realized most kids didn’t regularly eat bison. Classmates would marvel: “I thought they were extinct.”

Following graduation, King joined the Marine Corps and did tours of duty in Iraq. He was thinking of re-enlisting when his father talked him into taking over the Carolina Bison business last year.

After seeing action with the 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment in Ramadi, Iraq – billed by Time magazine as the deadliest city in the world in 2006 – King jokes that he’s not sure he’s safer back home, wrangling a herd of about 500 buffalo.

Buffalo are stronger, smarter and swifter than cattle, able to run about 45 mph and turn on a dime. The herds were the original bulldozers, laying the paths that Native Americans traveled, followed by the asphalt of our modern highways and interstates.

They can dent steel plates in the chutes where King and his crew herd them for biannual checkups.

“I think they are just majestic,” said Dr. Richard Oliver, a state veterinarian with the N.C. Department of Agriculture’s veterinary diagnostic lab in Arden. Oliver sees more cattle than buffalo in his business, so a tour of King’s ranch came as a treat.

King feeds his herd on the green pastures that overlook Asheville and the Newfound Mountains, along with hay, beer mash from local breweries and an organic mineral supplement.

Oliver, along with Dr. David Drum, and other lab members rode through the pastures in King’s pickup truck, inspecting the health of the herd from the safety of the truck bed.

“I’d rather tangle with a 1,200-pound beef bull than a 700-pound bison,” Oliver said.

The animals aren’t aggressive, but they are powerful and can quickly turn on anyone, anytime, they feel cornered, according to Mike Ellington, who’s been served as the ranch manager for the past year. Decked out in a black Stetson, Carhartt shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots, Ellington looks and fits the role of full-time rancher.

“I’ve been working with cattle my whole life,” Ellington said, but he’s learned to keep a respectful distance from bulls like 1683 when he leaves the safety of the truck cab.

Buffalo live well past 20 years old and breed almost as long. The calves are typically weaned at six months, with females weighing about 350 pounds and males up to 425 pounds. The animals are harvested for meat between 2 and 3 years old to meet USDA requirements.

King said the main challenge facing his company was the lack of a USDA-certified, high-quality meat processing facility in the region. For now, it’s cheaper for Carolina Bison to ship its buffalo to Colorado to be slaughtered and processed, vacuum-packed and properly labeled.

Such a meat-processing facility would be beneficial, not only for Carolina Bison, for other producers like Hickory Nut Gap Farm, catering to the taste in all things local. “But it’s easy now to get a high-security prison approved than an abattoir,” Dr. King said at the Venture Local conference.

Meanwhile, they are also trying to use the whole animal, from “tongue to testicle,” selling all of the cuts of meat. The fiber is particularly useful to crafters and some clothing designers. Combed buffalo hair can go for $80 an ounce.

King said that producing buffalo for meat actually contributes to the steady growth of the population, rather than keeping a handful in zoos and land preserves. While buffalo dwindled to perhaps less than 1,000 by the turn of the 20th century, the National Bison Association estimates there are about 220,000 now across the U.S.

For King, who grew up eating buffalo, the meat is sweeter, and “has more of a red-meat taste. I think it’s like eating beef of 100 years ago, before we watered it down and started feeding junk to animals.”

Bison has caught on with Baby Boomers interested in eating local and healthier meats, especially in Asheville “where we have more people willing to put a higher percentage of their wallet in what they eat,” King said.

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Information from: The Asheville Citizen-Times, http://www.citizen-times.com