NY sheriff: Killing of runaway bison was like the "Wild West"
COEYMANS, N.Y. -- An upstate New York sheriff stands by his decision to have 15 runaway bison shot and killed last week, but he says he should have had his own personnel shoot the animals instead of letting others do it.
Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple tells The Daily Gazette of Schenectady that a better course of action would have been to have the sheriff office's emergency response team shoot the bison Friday, a day after they escaped from an Albany-area farm.
Apple says he couldn't vouch for the training of three men sent by the buffalo farm's owners to shoot the animals. He likened the shooting scene to the "Wild West" and at one point tried to call it off before finding out it was over.
The Times Union reported that one of the men hired to shoot the animals appeared to have a heated exchange with Apple, who said he was concerned about the safety of people in the area.
Apple said the animals weren't put down humanely.
Authorities said the animals escaped Thursday from a farm across the Hudson River in the Rensselaer County town of Schodack. The owner believes they swam across the river to the town of Bethlehem, where they wandered across a busy stretch of Interstate 87 and into neighboring Coeymans.
"The buffalo are wild animals, they're not tame animals," farm owner George Mesic told the Times Union.
CBS affiliate WRGB reported that the animals can move as fast as 40 miles per hour.