Bison Bison

The sign above is wrong. There are no buffalo native to the United States. Just throwing that out there to start this post. We'll come back to that issue, I'm sure. 

In the summer of 2011, I visited Yellowstone National Park. I was hoping to see a bison. Just one. That would have been enough. There turned out to be a lot more than one. I saw my first bison strolling down the road (the bison, not me) near where we entered the park. I had my picture taken in front of the second (or maybe it was the third or fourth) less than an hour later. I saw herds and herds of these animals and by the end of the two days we spent in the Park, I'd seen them pretty much all over. On our way out our car was surrounded by a herd of them which must have been 80 or 100 strong. What I saw was better than one.

Male plains bison top out at around 2,000 pounds. They are the largest land mammal on our continent, besting the male moose by a good 400 pounds. Sure, there are other places in this world that have much larger animals and I've seen plenty of those in the last five years. But if we are talking land mammals in North America, the biggest we got is the bison. And Yellowstone wasn't enough. I still wanted to go see more bison. Time for a trip to North Dakota.

Bison bison. Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Unit.

I know what you are thinking. North Dakota? Really? Yep, really! North Dakota! As of the first of this year, I'd visited 45 of the 50 states. North Dakota was one of the remaining five. And they have a pretty good population of bison at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park just outside of Medora in the western portion of the state. Sounds like an excuse to get away for a long Memorial Day weekend.

Now, if you are thinking about doing this on a three day weekend from the east coast, know that you can't exactly fly commercial very easily into the western part of North Dakota, so either get your own plane or get ready for a longer-than-it-should-really-take type trip. A flight out of National, a connection (with a couple hours wait) somewhere in the midwest (Chicago on the way out there and Minneapolis-St. Paul on the way back), pick up a rental car and then another couple of hours drive from Bismarck to western North Dakota and you are there. Don't think it's worth it? Remember, there are bison involved here. Although I should caution if your flight out of Bismarck is delayed, you might end up in MSP for a night. We did!

The population of bison in the American west isn't what it once was. I think that goes without saying. But in case it doesn't, let me give you some numbers. While certainly nobody counted this many bison at any one time with any degree of precision, it is estimated that between 20 and 30 million once roamed the great plains of North America. They were an essential part of human life for a long time. They were both revered by and hunted for sustenance by the native American tribes in what is now parts of the mid-west and west of the United States.

Then the white man came. Hunting. Habitat destruction. Cattle and equine-borne disease. The railroad. Killing for sport. All of these things decimated the bison populations of the west. Bison hides became fashionable and killing soared to support demand. Dodge City, Kansas was established in the heart of bison country in 1872. Three months after its founding, the town had shipped more than 43,000 hides to the east coast behind a mantra of single shot kills. And by that I mean that apparently if you killed the matriarch of the herd, the rest of the bison stood still and mourned, allowing hunters to kill an entire herd with as many bullets as there were bison. By 1889, we were down to a recorded 1,091 plains bison. 30 million to 1,091 in less than a century.

Today, the bison population is much larger than it was in 1889 and I guess there would be some folks who might declare the recovery of the species as a conservation success story. That is if you can call a reduction from 30 million to about 500,000 total worldwide a success. And of the half a million, just 30,000 are pure bison that haven't been cross-bred with other species. Most of these survivors inhabit National Parks and other lands set aside for public use. The largest herd, about 5,000, is in Yellowstone National Park so it's no wonder we saw so many there in 2011. Theodore Roosevelt National Park has 500 or so total. It's also way smaller than Yellowstone at just 110 square miles as opposed to Yellowstone's almost 3,500 square miles. I felt optimistic about my chances of sightings in North Dakota.

Four bison, presumably male. Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit.

But before we get to all that, let's talk Teddy Roosevelt for a minute shall we? Roosevelt was a New York City-born, Harvard-educated childhood asthmatic who had been a New York State assemblyman by the time he was 24 years old. He would go on to be a New York City Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice President of the United States and then of course the 26th President of the United States. After his mother and wife died on the same day in 1884, Roosevelt fled the east coast for North Dakota and lived there for two years being a cowboy on his own ranch which he purchased with family money. This all happened between the assemblyman and police commissioner gigs.

While it might seem that Teddy was a rich city boy who just bought his way to cowboy-hood, apparently that was not the case. While he first knew very little about cattle ranching, he worked at it and weathered both the occupation and the Dakota winters for two years, winning respect from those he worked with and around as a consummate outdoorsman. He spent his 1884-1885 stint in Dakota at Elkhorn Ranch, a property he had built for him about 35 miles north of present day Medora. It wasn't the first time Roosevelt had lived in the area. During an earlier winter, he had spent time in a smaller cabin called the Maltese Cross Cabin closer to town. Both cabins still exist in some form. The Maltese Cross Cabin is preserved in full and located next to the National Park main entrance. Elkhorn Ranch is reduced to foundations and is accessible via dirt road near the Park.

That Roosevelt would end up with his name on a National Park is appropriate because history now remembers him as one of the Parks' biggest boosters. His early life, however, suggests that he was anything but interested in preserving the American west. His first trip to North Dakota was a hunting expedition to kill bison, probably before they all disappeared. Not exactly the work of a preservationist. But that trip also made him realize what unrestrained destruction and killing would do to the natural landscapes and animals on our continent. Later on during his time as President, he helped create 23 of the 35 National Parks in existence at the time he left office and he presided over passage of the Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities, which allowed the President without the input of Congress to declare properties in the United States as National Monuments. Ultimately despite a bit of a rocky start, I think Teddy probably earned his National Park.

Dakota Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Unit.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is located in the Dakota Badlands, a landscape which today is a topography marked by deep and sudden stone and mud drop-offs topped and interrupted by patches or full plains of grassland. It is a striking and rugged country that is at once both forbidding and gorgeous. Apparently the area was not much valued by native American tribes. The name Badlands is a literal translation from the native tongue of land that is bad, meaning worthless for any useful purpose.

The Park is divided into two parts: the North Unit and the South Unit. We made it to both and both are worth a visit. The South Unit is highlighted by the 36 mile long Scenic Loop Drive along with the Painted Canyon accessible via a separate entrance and miles upon miles of trails, including some that lead to a petrified forest. The North Unit has its own 14 mile long (28 there and back) Scenic Drive with fewer, but of significant length, trails through wilderness areas. Both parts of the Park are home to elk (didn't see), prairie dogs (saw plenty), deer (saw some mule deer), bighorn sheep (tried but came away empty), wolves and coyotes (some sort of grey dog-like thing ran in front of our car), badgers (nope!) and of course bison. Any yes, we did see bison, although I suppose it's fairly obvious based on the pictures you've passed to this point.

We spent a little more than a whole day in the Park, which for us constituted about 12-14 hours or so in total. We concentrated our time on the driving portions of the South and North Units although we did spend a couple of hours making the three mile hike to one of the petrified forest areas in the South Unit which took us over Badlands areas and grassy plains. Traversing that grassland punctuated by bison poop after bison poop on a hoof worn groove in the landscape was probably the one place we were glad we didn't see bison or any other sort of sizable mammal. We didn't make it to Elkhorn Ranch, although we rented an all-wheel drive vehicle that we would need to get there. Considering we'd likely just be looking at the vague outlines of the former foundations, we opted to do the petrified forest hike instead. I can't say I was disappointed with our choice. 

About to charge? He didn't. Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit.

So about those bison. It took us about as long this year to see our first pair as it did for me to see my first one in Yellowstone all those years ago. We stopped off at Painted Canyon as soon as we could right off I-94. They were standing probably about a quarter of a mile away being very bison-like, meaning just standing around and grazing. They were too far away to get a close look at but not as far away as the third we saw just moments later on the canyon floor. Three bison in about 15 minutes seemed like an auspicious beginning to me.

As it turns out, that feeling was right, although when I thought that I was thinking Painted Canyon represented a preview of tons and tons of animals we'd see that weekend. What the three first bison really foreshadowed was our seeing lots and lots of single and paired animals with very few groups larger than that and zero large herds. Apparently May is not the month to go see bison since the males are generally off doing their own thing by themselves rather than establishing herds or harems for mating. July or August would have been better for large herds, like about the time we hit Yellowstone in 2011. Our maximum herd size over the Memorial Day weekend? Six. Four of those six are shown in the third photograph above. That was the only group larger than three that we encountered in our time at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. And we only saw one group of three.

That scarcity of sightings made us linger at what animals we did see and look and listen closely. I didn't do this in Yellowstone much because there were so many animals to see. That and we covered the Park, which is the size of Rhode Island, in a single day. Hey, we were trying to make it all the way across the continent. There's only so much time to take in the scenery when you are doing that.

Scratching that winter coat off. Painted Canyon, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit.

These are some big animals and when they are up close next to you, hopefully with you in a car, they seem even more massive. If one of these decided it was threatened by you or me and decided it wanted to chase us off with a full speed charge, we would be in trouble. The Park guidance is to keep a distance of 25 yards between you and a bison and if it moves towards you, move a corresponding distance away to maintain the safe distance. As ungainly as these creatures seem, rest assured they can run way faster than you can. Just like most other animals on this planet I suppose.

Off roading in National Parks, is of course, strictly prohibited, but if you are driving the loop in the South Unit or the there and back road in the North Unit and happen to come across a bison on the side of the road or crossing the road, well I assume the 25 yard rule no longer applies. And there are times that you can get extremely close. May seemed like a good time of year to do this. It's not mating season, meaning hormones aren't raging, and it's not birthing season, meaning there's no maternal or paternal protective urge to want to back your SUV off the road with a little bison charge. We got incredibly close looks at one or two bison just feet from our car just by staying on the road and moving slowly past.

May is also obviously a transitional month between seasons, where the bison start to shed their winter coat in favor of a less shaggy, smooth shaven look. It was over 90 degrees the day we arrived in North Dakota and more than one bison that day seemed pretty anxious to cool down by losing part of their winter coat. We saw a couple of bison that day still half-coated who were panting pretty heavily in the mid-afternoon sun. Later on we'd see a lone bison rubbing his coat off on a fence post. That wouldn't be the last evidence of this behavior. Near pretty much every vertical post still standing along our petrified forest hike, we saw bison fur on the ground near the post, frequently with a good sized pile of bison poop nearby.

Close up. Painted Canyon, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit.

If there's one thing that surprised me about the bison we saw in North Dakota, it was how nimble and sure-footed they seemed. In Yellowstone seven years ago, I don't think I saw a single bison on any sort of hill. I assumed they just would rather stay on the grassy plains. But in Roosevelt National Park we saw some animals on what I would assume is some fairly unstable land. I realize animals are generally gifted with better walking skills than us humans but we are talking about 2,000 pound animals standing on slopes of mud and rock. We stopped at one spot in the North Unit where we saw a section of hill partially collapse under the weight of what looked to be a below 200 pound man. Either the bison are smarter than us or they are more sure footed than they look. Probably both.

Let's get back to that whole buffalo thing. More often than not, Americans refer to the bison we have here at home as buffalo. Indeed, even the signs inside the Park we were in refer to them that way. As I already stated, the sign is wrong. They are not buffalo. Apparently early European explorers thought the bison they saw while exploring North America looked like the buffalo they had seen in Asia and Africa. If this story is true, those explorers must have just heard tales or seen very poor pictures of buffalo. Other than the large, four-legged cow-like thing they both have going on, the two animals bear little resemblance to one another.

Don't believe me? Check out the pictures below showing a North American bison and an African buffalo. The bison has a thick wooly coat covering its head and front quarters which insulates the animal from the extreme cold that can occur in the environment it lives in; the buffalo does not. Bison also have thick humps on their back; not so for the buffalo. But the biggest indicator are the horns. The horns of a bison are tiny relative to its head and body size and they point straight up after growing out sideways from the head. The horns of a buffalo are formed perpendicular to its body on the tops of their heads and curve back on themselves. They are nothing like bison horns. Is that cleared up? Good.

Buffalo, Masai Mara National Park, Kenya. Bison, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit.

If you want to see buffalo, head to Africa or Asia. I can attest if you visit Botswana or Kenya or Tanzania you can see plenty. But give them more space than the bison please. They are the second most dangerous animal in Africa (after the hippo). If you want to see bison, head west, young man, after doing a little bit of research as to where you can find these magnificent creatures. 

If Theodore Roosevelt National Park ends up being on your wish list, a day and a half or so should about do you, assuming you want to drive most places and maybe take a little hike or two. We managed to take in the Painted Canyon and South Unit Scenic Loop Drive the day we got there and then handle the petrified forest hike, the entire North Unit Scenic Drive and a repeat of the South Unit Scenic Loop Drive on day two. You can easily fit in all that driving with some additional stops for some hiking.

One of the great things about National Parks is that a visit can be completely different based on each person's experiences. If you wanted to hike every trail in Theodore Roosevelt National Park from start to finish, you'd be there for a week or more. But I can highly recommend the Wind Canyon Trail in the South Unit for its incredible view of the Little Missouri River (who knows you might also see a bison along the water's edge) and the views of the Badlands in the North Unit in general. I thought the view from Oxbow Overlook at the end of the drive was the most spectacular; head away from the trail to Sperati Point for some amazing scenery.

For me, these animals are national treasures and the ultimate symbol of the American west. I know they are herd animals that most of the time do nothing very interesting but it is worth every seven years or so going to see some in the wild in person, I think. Let's see if I can wait until 2025. North Dakota was worth a long weekend to see these creatures.