D.C. "Bud" Basolo had a special love for good steak and buffalo, and decades ago he combined that love into creating one of the most unusual creatures ever to grace a dinner table: the beefalo.

The tender meat from cross-bred cattle and bison became a culinary sensation after its debut was announced in a Time magazine article in 1973, and over the next couple of decades beefalo proliferated around the globe as Mr. Basolo sold his special beefalo sperm to hundreds of ranchers.

By the time he died Dec. 7 at his ranch in Tracy at age 89, his mark in meat history had been notched so deeply that he had made the Guinness Book of World Records for selling the priciest-ever domestic bull.

"My dad was a character with a capital C," said his daughter, Judi Basolo of San Francisco. "His adoration for friends, hospitality, the outdoors and so much more made him so fun. He was a real bon vivant."

The beefalo hybrid - still sold in meat markets today - is three-eighths buffalo and five-eighths domestic cattle, created through artificial insemination. Basolo said her dad came up with the concept of hybridizing the animals after he hunted buffalo in Wyoming and decided he wanted to help preserve the quintessentially American creature.

"First, he bought a 100-square-mile ranch in Wyoming that had hundreds of wild buffalo on it, and then he decided he had to go out and find different bloodlines to increase and strengthen the herd," Basolo said.

After bringing in other buffalo, he reckoned he would take the effort one step further and create an entirely new, hardy breed - which he eventually called the beefalo.

Time's article described it as "a meaty, tasty, economical animal," and critics raved about its trait of being tender to the fork while lacking the fattiness of the usual beef steak.

Beefalo is considered a hardy stock that survives well in rugged conditions and hot weather.

Mr. Basolo sold beefalo meat, mostly in Northern California, but his mainstay in the endeavor was shipping out breeding sperm from his closely guarded beefalo bulls, his daughter said. He had cattle ranches in Tracy, the Sierra foothills and the delta - and also maintained for many years the Wyoming herd of buffalo, which at 5,000 head was the largest privately owned herd of its kind in the early 1970s.

In 1975, one of Mr. Basolo's purebred beefalo bulls set a record for the highest price ever for a domestic animal when he sold it to a Canadian breeder for $2.5 million.

Mr. Basolo also originated the recipe and meat supply for the buffalo stew at the Tommy's Joynt restaurant on Van Ness Avenue.

Mr. Basolo retired and sold off his beefalo operations by the early 1990s, his daughter said.

He was born in 1923 in Fillmore (Ventura County) to a Genovese immigrant father and Scottish-Irish mother, and moved to Tracy at 12 years old, living on the same ranch where he died in December.

After serving in the merchant marine in World War II, Mr. Basolo became a meat broker in San Francisco, taking in lamb shipments from Australia and New Zealand. The beefalo business followed that.

He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Georgia Basolo of Tracy; his daughter; one son, Steve Basolo of Tracy; and one grandchild, Natalie Basolo of Laramie, Wyo.

No services are planned.
