Kendra Neef often finds herself exploring little-known corners of Jasper National Park. 

“I’m always keeping my eye out for cool stuff,” the local wildlife guide and photographer said.

On April 15, very soon after the ice came off of Talbot Lake in the east end of Jasper National Park, Neef’s eye spied perhaps the coolest discovery she’d ever made. 

She and her boyfriend were paddling their kayaks, poking around the far shoreline opposite the highway when she spotted what she thought was an antler poking out of the water. Whatever it was, it was stuck in the mud under about two feet of very clear water. 

“We said ‘oh maybe it’s a sheep horn, this is way cooler than an antler,’” she said.

As they pulled on it and the object came free from the bottom of the lake, it became clear it wasn’t a sheep horn, either. The horn was attached to a massive skull. It weighed about 30 pounds.

“Honestly my first thought was this was from a cow or something,” she laughed. 

They pulled the skull on top of the boat, took some photos and imagined what they could be looking at. Eventually, they put it back in the water, but the mystery persisted. Neef sent a message to Parks Canada wildlife specialist Mark Bradley, who emailed her back suggesting her discovery looked like a bison skull.

“Holy, that’s so cool,” she thought. 

Bradley said if she was interested in collecting the bison skull, Parks Canada would be able to find out more information about it. Neef was in. A couple days later, she paddled back out to the dig site, pulled the skull back onto her boat, “tried to clean as many gross bugs off it as possible” and delivered it to Bradley. 

Upon receiving the specimen, Bradley conferred with experts at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton who agreed the skull is almost certainly from Parks Canada’s attempt, 43 years ago, to repopulate bison in Jasper National Park.

“It was shown to experts at the provincial museum and it looks to be about that age,” communications officer Steve Young said.

In 1978 Parks Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Service brought in 28 bison to JNP from Elk Island National Park. The animals were trucked to Rock Lake, on the east side of the park’s border, then flown by helicopter to Willow Creek, near the park’s north boundary. After a summer of being penned in a 14-sq-km holding area, the animals were released, free to make a home in the muskeg-rich country where, two centuries earlier, their ancestors had done the same.

But the bison didn’t stay. All but two of the animals made their way north, out of the park, and eventually as far as Grande Prairie. The 2,000 pound animals broke down ranchers’ fences and got into farmers’ crops, creating enough of a nuisance to force the project’s end. 

More bison drama in Jasper took place a few years later when 14 animals escaped from a bison ranch near Hinton and found their way into the Fiddle River Valley. Half a dozen of the animals were eventually recaptured, three or four were killed in a collision with a train, but two bison split off and remained in the lower Athabasca Valley. According to retired wildlife specialist Wes Bradford one animal died within a year but the other, a cow, stayed on, moving between the Rocky River drainage and the Devona Flats area on the north side of the Athabasca River. She remained in that willowy wonderland for the better part of 10 years. She was last seen in 1994.

“You used to see her all the time in the spring at the east end of Talbot Lake,” Bradford recalled. “She’d be feeding on the sedges, up to her belly in water.” 

That’s exactly where Neef came across her discovery, and while from Bradford’s account it sounds like the skull she found could have been one of the escapees, even if she’ll never get to the bottom of the mystery, Neef is satisfied to have made such a tangible connection to Jasper’s past.

“Whether it’s one of the 28 that were reintroduced or if it was from way back in the day, either way, it’s Jasper’s history and that’s really neat.”

Bob Covey //thejasperlocal@gmail.com

This story used parts of a February 15, 2017 article in The Jasper Local, Where The Buffalo Roamed.