Hello everybody this is Hal Herring backcountry hunters and English podcast and blast

hey I wanted to record an intro to my interview today with Dan O'Brien

uh who is a bison rancher, Buffalo rancher,

and near Hermosa, South Dakota.

Dan's also the author of 15 books of novels and non-fiction he started out as a biologist and

endangered species biologists actually in or the South Dakota game and fish and went to work for the Paragreen Fund.

He's been a falconer for about 60 years and he's best known now actually as the founder of Wild Idea, which is a Byson Meat company, Eyes and Products Company that

specializes in the humane treatment of Buffalo, the restoration of a large significant part of the

Great Plains, the restoration of the Buffalo as a keystone species there.

He's kind of a self-taught by observation, really deep ecologists in the Great Plains, the

mixed grass prairie. His books include imminent domain which the collection of short fiction

1987 in the center of the nation is a novel 1991 the contract surgeon, Brendan Prairie,

1996, the contract surgeon, a novel 1999,

which is a particular interest to me

because it's about Valentine,

McGillicuddy, who was an Indian agent and doctor on the frontier there

near where Dan lives now and has lived for 50 years. Valentine McGillicuddy was best friends with Crazy Horse and was known to the Ag Lala

as one of their main advocates and friends.

Maybe the best known book of Dan's is The Rights of Autumn,

of Falconer's Journey across the American West

that was published in 1988,

and Equinox Life,

...