Buffalo | Field 2 Field

May 6, 2020May 6, 2020

Bison ranching industry struggling through COVID-19

Bison ranching. The first thing that may come to mind is hundreds of Bison thundering down the prairie a long time ago. Did you know we raise bison on farms across the country? In fact, the U.S. has bison production in every state in the union. While it’s been a growing industry for many years, the impact of COVID-19 on raising Bison has been anything but positive.

“We’re a small segment of agriculture,” says Dave Carter, the Executive Director of the National Bison Association. “However, we’ve been growing for the last 15 years and turning into a strong and steady business. Most producers have been pretty profitable over that stretch.”

Here’s an interesting conversation about raising bison in the United States. It’s from a YouTube channel called Off-Farm Income

Bison is marketed in two locations, similar to the other major protein segments in U.S. agriculture. Those markets include the restaurant/foodservice sector and the retail sector. Carter said because bison processors tend to be smaller than their counterparts that process beef and pork, they often specialize in one market or the other.

“When COVID-19 hit and restaurants shut down, those processors serving the foodservice customers really took a hit,” he said. “Some have had to lay off up to 60 percent of their employees almost overnight. Those folks who saw restaurants shut down were suddenly scrambling and trying to adapt as retail demand went up.

Bison ranching — Dave Carter is the Executive Director of the National Bison Association. (Photo from the Business Journals)

“Herein lies the problem,” Carter added. “Most of the higher-end cuts like steaks go into the restaurant and foodservice sector. On the retail side, customers are going into stores to buy ground bison. When the higher-end cuts like tenderloins at $24 a pound aren’t selling while people are buying ground bison at $9 a pound, it has a significant financial impact.”

The prices that processors have paid to ranchers over the past month have dropped around 40 cents a pound, a significant price cut for a large animal like bison. Prices have been around $3.70 a pound. He admits while other livestock sectors would love to see that price, it’s still a significant drop for bison producers in just one month’s time.

The ranchers in the finishing segment of the bison industry are the ones being hit hardest because they’ve got animals that are ready to go and are having to hold onto them longer. Processors aren’t working as quickly as they normally would due to layoffs and illness. Animals that stay longer on the farm tend to gain more weight than is optimum and it adds more expense to the bottom line.

One of the biggest challenges the industry faces is getting enough feed because of what’s going on in the ethanol industry. “Distiller’s grains have been a big part of our feeding formula in bison ranching,” Carter said. “Because of the crisis in the ethanol industry, the price of distiller’s grains is going up significantly and the availability is going down.

“That means we now have ranchers who will get less for their animals when they deliver them to their processor,” he added, “but their feed costs are going up at the same time.”

He is thankful that none of the bison processing plants in the country have had to shut down entirely because of the outbreak. Unfortunately, a high number of workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and that’s made other employees hesitant to come to work. But Carter says those bison processors are doing a “great job” of caring for their workers through social distancing, through testing, and by providing Personal Protective Equipment,

Livestock producers in the pork sector have had to make the horrible decision to euthanize some of their animals as they don’t have anywhere to send their hogs for processing. Carter says the bison industry isn’t at the point yet.

“We still have enough supply chain capacity that our ranchers haven’t had to make that decision,” he said. “One reason for that is, unlike our friends in the cattle industry, we don’t have fall calving. Most of our calves are born between April and June, which meant they were weaned and already sent to other ranchers for finishing between November and February of last year.

“That means producers were already done selling their previous calf crop before COVID-19 showed up,” Carter added. “A lot of the ranchers that are feeding bison will probably turn some of their animals back out to pasture and let them graze on grass, so they don’t have the extra feed expense. We can hold them longer than a lot of other livestock, so we aren’t in danger of having to euthanize them in the near future.”

March 29, 2019March 29, 2019

San Francisco 49ers pick SD man as new Head Trainer

By Chad Smith

“Plan your work, work your plan, and toss in just the right amount of luck.” That might be a good way to sum up the journey Dustin Little took to the pinnacle of his profession. The Castlewood, South Dakota native is the new Head Trainer for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. I caught up to him in the middle of a workout at the Niners facility and Little said where he’s at is just now starting to sink in.

“It feels great,” he said in between reps. “It’s one of those things where you work hard for a long time with a plan in place, and then you get to where you wanna be. To get to this place in my career and my life, with my family, it’s just great to see all the sacrifices you’ve made, and the hard work get rewarded.”

This road to the San Francisco 49ers started during his college days at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The young Coyote (pronounced KY-yote in South Dakota) started with Pre-Physical Therapy studies in 2004. Little always knew he didn’t want to spend his career indoors. Sports had been a big part of his life growing up in his hometown and he wanted to work in some kind of a sports setting. He took a non-traditional approach to get there.

“I went five years for undergraduate work at USD and another three years to get my Doctorate in Physical Therapy,” he said. “After that, I made the unusual decision to go back to athletic training school for a master’s degree. At the time, that career path was unheard of. However, it made sense because I wanted to get dual credentials in physical therapy and athletic training.

“During physical therapy schooling, I also took the test for strength and conditioning certification,” Little added. “I’ve always tried to make sure my decisions supported my career goal and made me well-rounded. I wanted to be well-versed in a lot of different areas.”

As a part of his education, Little did a student internship with the Denver Broncos. Being a little older than the other interns because the years of schooling he’d already put in, really helped to give him a leg up.

“In 2013,” Little remembered, “I was between my first and second year of athletic training school. I called it my ‘five-week job interview.’ It really hit me the first time I walked in their door that I was in an NFL facility.

“It hit me even more when I was in the cafeteria one day,” he added. “You only had about five minutes to cram down lunch and get back to work. (Then-starting quarterback) Payton Manning walked by that day. That’s when it sank in that I was working in the National Football League.”

For people who don’t know, Little said a summer internship is a “16-hour workday,” with a lot of grunt work to do. He was coming in as a full-time physical therapist, who’d been putting in his time at a clinic over the previous year. He took it as a test.

“They wanna know if you have an ego and are you willing to do the grunt work,” Little said. “Are you willing to put 16-hour days in for seven days a week over the course of the internship? I’d left my then-three-month-old son and wife back at home for this opportunity. You find out quickly if you want to work in the NFL or if you just think you do.

“It’s true work,” he adds. “You aren’t just working a 40-hour week and asking for occasional time off. It’s a lot of long days. For example, as we’re talking, I’ve been here at the 49er’s facility since 4:30 a.m. it’s now 5:30 p.m. and I’m not done yet. It’s not just being on TV on Sundays.”

It was a long journey that just completed as Dustin Little put in 15 years of hard work. Little, a Castlewood, South Dakota native, was recently named as Head Trainer for the San Francisco 49ers. (AP Photo)

Interns don’t get to do much actual caring for players. Little said his case was unusual in that he could work with players rehabbing from injuries, thanks to his PT degree. Interns set up water, tear down water, hydrate the players, the take care of the cleaning up, re-cleaning up, and “then we clean up some more.”

“I figured out during the internship that this was what I wanted to do,” Little said. “I just loved the challenge of working with professional athletes. They don’t have a lot of physical limitations, so you have to be creative in challenging them physically. Getting these guys where they need to be is something I enjoy.”

Some of the other interns were 19 and 20-years old, while Little came in at 25, married, and the father of his first child. He grew up on a farm in South Dakota, so Little had a good idea of what hard work was and what it would take to succeed. “I was there for a five-week job interview and that’s what it eventually turned out to be,” he said.

“I demonstrated my capabilities, kept my mouth shut, and worked hard,” Little added. “I think they noticed that. At the end of 2014, I was getting ready to graduate with my master’s. The Buffalo Bills were creating a position and talked to then-director of sports medicine at South Dakota State University, Owen Stanley. He told them, ‘I have a kid right here for you.’

“I had an interview with the Bills on a Monday-Tuesday,” Little said. “Steven Antonopulos, Director of Sports Medicine for the Broncos, was listed as a reference and knew I was out there. The following Friday, the then-current physical therapist for the Broncos came in to see Antonopulos and said he’s going to resign. Steve called me that Friday at 6:30 a.m. to tell me that PT had just quit and said he’s offering it to me right then.”

The interesting thing came as Little called Buffalo to let them know he would be taking the job with Denver. “The guy I called with Buffalo actually said he was going to offer me the job there the night before, but he just got busy,” he said. “He’d decided to offer me the job with Buffalo that day. Funny how things work out.”

Needless to say, the feeling that Little had after getting the call from Denver was through-the-roof. “I put in so much work to get here,” Little said. “You’re taking it in but it’s also surreal, like ‘this is really happening?’ It took a while to sink in. You’re just thankful for what you did and the people who helped you get there.”

Little stayed with the Broncos for five years, almost to the day. His goal was always to be a head trainer in the NFL. The San Francisco 49ers had begun reaching out to other organizations in the NFL and were looking for good people who might fill their head trainer position. Little’s name got thrown into the mix for the spot.

“All you can ask for is an opportunity,” he said. “I ended up coming out to San Francisco for my first interview. Did a second interview on the phone before heading out to the combine to meet with 49ers personnel. They called me the last day of the combine and offered me the position.”

When I first caught up with him, Little had been with the San Francisco 49ers for about 10 days. His wife (Bailey) and four kids will join him as soon as possible. By the middle of March, the Little kids were 6, 5, 3, and 1. Little says he goes to a job, but Bailey is the one who “goes to work.” Now that they’ve found a landing spot, Little says he’s had time to reflect on the journey from the cornfields of South Dakota all the way out to the NFL.

“I never looked at as a small-town guy coming all the way out to San Francisco,” he said. “My mindset has never been to hold myself back because I come from a small town. You can’t set those kinds of limitations on yourself.”

In fact, growing up in South Dakota and playing different sports actually will help him be even more successful. “Absolutely, some of the guys in Denver really liked that about me,” he recalled. “I’m not quite the normal looking trainer when I walk in the room because I’m 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds. I’ve played sports, I understand rehabbing, strength and conditioning, plus I can throw the football if they need me to.

“I’m not the athlete I was but I still have capabilities,” Little added. “The players really like it when you can demonstrate things. These guys are competitive. If you challenge them on an exercise, do it better than they do, it gets them a little fired up.”

August 2, 2018

Rushford MN man literally stumbles on bison history

A funny thing happened to Dawson Dahl of Rushford during a family trip to the beach. It was a typical summer day and the family decided to go swimming. While walking through the sand, Dahl accidentally stubbed his toe. That painful moment led to a very interesting discovery for him and the rest of the family.

“It was a hot day and we went down to the Point, which is what we call the spot where the crick and the River meet,” he recalled. “We were swimming while my mom sat on the bank and read a book. After getting out of the water, I stubbed my toe on something. I wanted to rip it out of there so no one else would get hurt. I didn’t know it at the time, but I stubbed my toe on the horn of a big Bison skull.”

Dahl grew more interested as he kept digging and saw that his find was something large. As he worked it out of the ground, his mom noticed all the digging and wanted to know what it was too. After finally working it free, Dahl said his mom wasn’t too thrilled by what he’d found.

“She kept saying ‘throw it away’ but I wasn’t going to,” he recalled. “I said ‘I’m keeping this thing.’ It was heavy. After we cleaned the sand out, I’m sure it was lighter. We took it home and hosed it off. We didn’t polish it or anything like that, but we sure did clean a lot of sand out of it.”

As some folks might imagine, he said it was obviously quite a shock to pull a full-sized, complete Bison skull out of the ground. Dahl dug to the point that he could yank the horn with both hands and finally pulled it up out of its resting place. His first reaction?

“Wow, what is this,” he said. “I literally sat there for a few seconds trying to figure out what it was that I had just pulled out of the creek.

“We live pretty close to the creek, so I just carried it home, and then we got it hosed off and cleaned up,” he recalled. “After that, we stuck it in a wheelbarrow and I guess it sat there for six months. Then, we got the idea to bring it to the family White Elephant gift exchange at Christmas.”

Dahl said he actually wanted to hang the skull on the wall, but his mom wasn’t really high on the idea. So, when Christmas rolled around, the Dahls wrapped it up in a box and decided to give it as a surprise gift to a family member. So, which extended family member got the ‘gift?’

“Of all people, my grandmother picked it out,” he said with a smile that was almost visible during a phone conversation. “She’s really not into that type of thing. She unwrapped the big box and opened the lid, jumped back in her chair and yelled. Everyone wanted to know what it was. She started laughing and said she wasn’t going to touch it.

“My great-uncle Larry walked in, saw what it was, and grabbed it by both horns to pull it up out of the box,” he added. “The whole room just exploded in surprise. He’s into that kind of thing and took it home from the family get-together. I’m pretty sure he actually had someone look at it and tell him the skull was actually from the 1800s.”

The skull actually has a hole in it near the brain and figured that’s where hunters shot and killed the bison. The people who dated the skull figured that the Point is where the skull had been buried before eventually working its way back to the surface, where Dahl literally bumped into it.

“It was absolutely perfect timing,” he said.