2016 / Editorial / Photo Essay (Non-Pro)

The Gleaners

  • Photographer
    Matt Hamon

THE GLEANERS: This current series of photographs focuses on a small group of primitive skills practitioners who attend the annual buffalo hunt on the perimeter of Yellowstone National Park in Montana to scavenge animal parts and other animal products left behind by Native American hunters. After offering assistance to hunters by field dressing, skinning, quartering and carrying off buffalo to vehicles for transportation, any meat scraps left behind are canned or packaged, fat is rendered and placed in jars, hides are tanned and bones are used to make primitive tools and ornamental objects. These individuals see themselves as a neutral party to the often controversial polemic around the hunt and management of Yellowstone buffalo, and aim to make use of what would otherwise be left behind.