Broker to send isle bison
to mainland via 747

Associated Press

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- A Montana livestock broker hopes to make a killing in Canada's hot market for buffalo meat by rounding up a 747-load of bison this month.

From Kauai.

Steve Killorn of Harlowton, Mont., plans to load 140 bison into crates at a Kauai ranch, ship the crates to Oahu, then fly them to Los Angeles.

From there, the bison will be trucked to a bison ranch in either Alberta or Saskatchewan, depending on the buyer, Killorn said. Along the way, the animals may be quarantined in both Montana and Canada.

The bison are being sold by William Mowry, who has raised buffalo on his Hanalei Garden Farms for nearly 20 years. He sells the bison for meat in Hawaii and Japan, but now has a surplus, Killorn said.

"He's just propagated to the point where he has to do something with them, and I was in the right place at the right time," he said.

Mowry could not be reached for comment this morning.

Killorn said he has rented a 747 cargo plane to fly the bison, the exact number of which will be determined by how much weight the jet can hold. Flying to Los Angeles instead of Canada avoids many obstacles, he said.

"You can't just fly into Canada," Killorn said. "You can't do unscheduled flights. There's a lot to it."

The bison are supposed to be flown from Oahu by the end of April, he said.

Killorn shouldn't have trouble finding buyers for the bison in western Canada, said Norm Moore, a bison auctioneer in Alder Flats, Alberta.

Buffalo meat sells for 2-1/2 times the price of beef, and an increasing number of ranchers are turning to buffalo, Moore said.

There are 600 bison ranches in Alberta alone, and close to 30,000 bison, he said.

"The numbers are really growing, and they're only growing as fast as biologically possible," Moore said. "Anytime (bison) are for sale, it seems like Alberta tends to buy them."