Restoring a brave Texas buffalo: Cook continues uncle’s work by restoring courthouse buffalo

If you have visited the lowest level of the Young County Courthouse there is one thing that stands out, the buffalo head mounted to the wall. 

While the story behind the buffalo has been an interesting subject for over 35 years, Robert Liles, the man who did the taxidermy work, made it a centerpiece at the courthouse. Liles had many passions such as wildlife photography and hunting.

His wife Linda said he stayed busy working on taxidermy up until the day he died in October 2000. She said the process for the buffalo was a much more involved experience. 

“Taxidermy has changed so much. The hardest part of it was what they called fleshing, and they turned the wrong side out and got all the excess flesh off of it, you know, down close to the hide and stuff and it would take about three hours just to do that. It was a lot more than that from Buffalo,” she said.

His work on the buffalo has been seen by countless individuals walking the halls of the courthouse and is something his nephew Nathan Cook remembers seeing when he was only seven years old. 

Nathan Cook’s brother, Jarod Cook, who serves as the county liaison for the Texas Division of Emergency Management, approached County Judge Win Graham around a month ago about restoring the buffalo and was given the green light to move forward.

Following in the footsteps of his uncle, Nathan Cook has his own taxidermy business in called Tagged Out Taxidermy and possesses the tools and the knowledge to restore his uncle’s work.

“It’s a symbol of the courthouse to me, but because it’s (part of my) family, I wanted to fix it so it’s still here for them, and it’s here for everybody else,” Nathan Cook said.

He said that with the age of the skin on the mounted buffalo head and its current shape, he bought new buffalo skin to redo the areas of wear. The head will still retain most of the original parts but will have new parts to repair aged areas.

Krystal Liles Scheller, who grew up with her father being an avid hunter and all-around outdoorsman, said it is rewarding to see his work being restored within the family.

“A lot of his nephews just looked up to him. They were always with him. And so to see (Nathan) take after him and be so passionate about something that my dad was also passionate about, that’s really cool,” she said.

Nathan Cook and Jarod Cook loaded up the mounted head Tuesday, March 4. The restoration process is in progress and the buffalo will be transported back to the courthouse so it can be a centerpiece again for all to see.

History of the buffalo

It was in August 1986 that a buffalo kept on the L and S ranch in Jack County escaped and wandered through Palo Pinto County before making a stop in a residential area in Graham.

The Young County Sheriff’s Office was held at bay for seven hours in 100-plus degree heat with multiple capture attempts before officers killed the animal using a shotgun loaded with deer slug.

“We were trying to capture the thing, we didn’t want to kill it,” YCSO Chief Deputy Van Perryman said in 1986 to The Graham Leader. “We roped it, but the buffalo literally dragged the horse down and pulled it over. We shot it with an animal tranquilizer, but that didn’t seem to have any effect on him.”

Graham Police Department and YCSO were worried about the buffalo being in an area where children play and the potential of it moving to a neighborhood.

On a placard below the mounted buffalo head, then-sheriff Ed Shields described the animal as “A brave Texas buffalo in the wrong place and time.”