Alberta's Grass-fed Bison Feed on Fescue

Kilmorey Lodge Sells High Country Ranch Game

Alberta is the unofficial provincial forerunner when it comes to red meat. Most meat consumed in BC comes from Alberta ranches, but has the movement toward more sustainable food production infiltrated this notoriously conservative pocket of Canada?

Among all the grain-fed, well-marbled protein on the hoof, some beef and bison are being raised organically and humanely. According to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma livestock raised naturally on grass is not only healthier to eat, it is also better for the environment.

High Country Ranch Near Pincher Creek, Alberta

Tom Olson, a top Canadian tax lawyer by profession, is a bison evangelist by determination, and the owner of herd of North America Plains bison. Olson's High Country Ranch, a four-square-mile patch of rolling Alberta high prairie south of Pincher Creek and just north of the Montana border, allows the bison to live a semi-wild existence.

There are no power lines to be seen and few trees - just open range as it once was before the oil rigs, the wind farms, the beef feedlots and people other than the First Nations.

Traditionally, this high plains area was the wintering ground for thousands of bison thanks to warm Chinooks that melt the snow so that the bison can get at the grass or fescue local grasses. In summer, the bison migrate to lower levels and more abundant fresh-growing grass. The grasses are the key to raising bison.

Olson explains, "I see myself as a grass farmer first. The bison don't need brought-in food to survive. They can live wholly on the grass they find and guess what - it's free - it only needs the sun to grow. There's no call for expensive, oil-based fertilizers or corporate-controlled designer seeds. Unfortunately, over the years invasive, non-native grasses have taken over from the native fescue. They're not as nourishing, and they crowd out the good native species, turning the prairie into a monoculture. My goal is to return the land to its original state of native grasses."

Olson points out areas where the native grasses have again taken hold. Bulls, cows and calves are strung out along the rise. They're huge; some weigh as much as 2,000 pounds.

Kimorey Lodge in Waterton Lakes National Park

Visitors can dine on bison tenderloin with a sauce of Auchentoshan single malt, chocolate and local Saskatoon berries at the historic Kilmorey Lodge in Waterton Lakes National Park. It is tender like beef, but slightly sweet tasting, quite lean and mildly gamey yet with a clean flavour. Eaten so close to the source, it seems so right-in harmony with it surroundings.

High Country Ranch 403.974.3425