About two and a half years ago, we visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. We wanted to visit a new state and see bison. We were successful in both efforts, although I think we never saw more than five bison together on that long weekend trip and we probably saw fewer than 50 bison total the entire time we were there.
I called the post that I wrote about that trip Bison Bison, the animals' genus and species name, to emphasize that these creatures are not buffalo. Today's post adds another "bison" to the title because we just finished a trip where we saw way, way, way more bison than we did in 2018 in North Dakota.
When I wrote my last bison blog post, I offered up some pretty chilling numbers: an estimated 20 to 30 million bison on the great plains before the arrival of European man reduced to 1,091 by the year 1889. Those statistics only considered bison on the great plains because that's where the slightly more than a thousand ended up. The real numbers are way worse. There are estimates out there of 30 to 60 million total bison alive before the 1800s, so it's really 60 million to 1,000 in less than a couple of centuries. It's an almost inconceivable destruction of a single species.
How did this happen? Hunting, habitat destruction, disease, the railroad, sport killing, a belief that slaying the bison would hasten the death of the Native American tribes. Take your pick. They are all significant factors. What is it about man that we feel compelled to wipe out every member of a species? Bison ranged as far east as Ohio at one point. Ohio!!!! I always think of bison as a western animal. Who'd have thought they lived that far east? Not me, certainly, but maybe that's because that's because they were wiped out in Ohio in 1802.
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| Bison sculpture showing Native American warrior on horseback chasing six bison. Antelope Island State Park, Utah. |
There were some legitimate and half-hearted efforts made in the 1800s to preserve the herds of bison roaming the American west and midwest. Several states introduced legislation that made it illegal to waste bison meat (bison were regularly killed for hides and their bodies left to rot where they were killed) but the laws were either not enforced or vetoed by the state's governor before they became law (I'm looking at you, Kansas!). Idaho was a trailblazer of sorts in species conservation, becoming the first state to enact a law protecting the bison in 1864. Although they passed the law after all the bison in Idaho were eradicated (d'oh!!). New Mexico did the exact same stupid thing in 1880.
The United States house and senate eventually took a shot at preservation, passing a bill protecting female bison in 1874, only to see it go deliberately unsigned by President Ulysses S. Grant. Further north, Canada did us one better, actually passing sweeping protections for bison all the way into law. And then they repealed it the very next year. Overall, we as humans just weren't very serious about keeping these animals on the face of the Earth.
Thank God we didn't finish the job. Those 1,091 from 1889 have rebounded to about half a million today, although many of those 500,000 or so animals are cross-breeds somehow with cattle. There's a herd of about 500 or so in Theodore Roosevelt National Park and we saw very few of those in 2018. This year, we went big with a trip to Yellowstone National Park which has the largest wild herd in the world at 5,000 or so. Four full days in the Park would likely get us the bison viewing experience of a lifetime.
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| Bison herd. Lamar Valley. Yellowstone National Park. This is my favorite bison pic of the trip. |
So first of all, Yellowstone is not Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It's way bigger, the landscape is significantly more varied and there are a whole ton of bison (not buffalo) everywhere. If we had wanted to spend a single day inside Yellowstone and see no bison, I'm not sure it would have been possible. We saw solitary bison around Upper Geyser Basin on day one in Yellowstone. We saw pairs and threes of bachelor bison in Hayden Valley. We saw bison freezing in the early morning throughout the western side of the Park. And we saw massive herds between Norris and Madison and in Lamar Valley.
By "massive herds" here, I don't mean in the millions or thousands or even hundreds of animals. I mean maybe 100. In 2020, that passes for massive, bison-herd-wise. We tried counting one especially large group and got to 86 before we lost count of which we had counted and which we had not. Still, 86 or maybe up to 100 is way more than the five maximum we saw at Theodore Roosevelt two years ago.
We saw them spread across fields, running down hillsides, eating at a distance of feet from the roadside and running in a herd in the opposite lane of the road between Tower-Roosevelt and Lamar Valley as if they were moving commuters on the way to work. They were everywhere and there was a ton of time over four plus days in the Park to get some great looks at these creatures.
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| Large herd of bison between Madison and Norris. Yellowstone National Park. |
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| Closer look in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park. |
One of the great things about spending so much concentrated time watching bison (or any other large animal for that matter) is that you get to appreciate both how massive these things are but also take in their smallest behaviors. An adult male bison can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and they are solid. And dangerous. I guess you could be fooled into thinking they are just shaggier cows with a bit more weight but they move way quicker and faster than any cow I've seen. You get a sense of that size when they walk or run within a couple of feet of your open car window (not kidding about the distance there). These are some large and lethal animals.
It seems like every year there's a story about someone getting gored or worse by a bison somewhere in the United States, including in Yellowstone. The most notable bison "attack" this year probably occurred in South Dakota's Custer State Park where a woman was picked up by her belt loop and tossed by a bison after getting a bit too close to a calf. What is with these people? Even if you didn't get handed a flyer describing how dangerous bison are when you enter Yellowstone (you do, by the way), what makes you want to get close to an animal with sharp horns ten times the size of a good-sized adult man?
While we didn't see anyone get attacked in our week at Yellowstone, we did see several instances of people getting uncomfortably close to bison in the Park. If something had broken the wrong way for the woman who was about five times further from her car than to the approaching bison one morning near Norris, I could have seen something seriously troubling happening. I understand the excitement of wanting to get close to these animals, but just keep your car (or at least another person) between you and them. It's just smart.
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| Bison swimming, Hayden Valley, Yellowstone National Park. |
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| Bison keeping warm near a hot spring in the below freezing early morning. Yellowstone National Park. |
While you are keeping a respectful distance, watch. You might find something worth remembering.
It's always thrilling to see wildlife super close up. One of the most exciting aspects of seeing bison in particular in Yellowstone is that while we are not supposed to be approaching these animals to closer than 25 yards, there's nothing preventing you from being approached by a bison or two or twelve or more. And if there's a species that will get close to you in Yellowstone, it's the bison, the biggest species in the Park.
I feel pretty comfortable in saying that it's unlikely that a bison is going to attack your car. I'm not saying it's never happened, just that I felt pretty secure inside with the doors closed and the windows up (and mostly when they were down too for that matter) when we were in Yellowstone. But there were times I worried just a little bit which I guess made those bison encounters all the more thrilling. These animals are aggressive with one another and I don't know enough about bison to know if they are play fighting or really getting serious. There was one time that two bison in a pretty confined spot tussled with each other and then raced past our car. No danger really but there was a sense for a second that something could have gone wrong, if a bison had decided to run headlong into a large metal object. Although why would they, really?
The two aggressive bison rushing past the passenger side of the car were part of a bachelor foursome. We thought we might be subject to a second round when we saw one of the two left behind digging in the dirt with his front hoof, looking very much like a bull ready to charge. As it turned out, he was just loosening up the dirt so he could roll around and cool off in the dust.
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| Nothing like a good dust bath! Between Norris and Madison. Yellowstone National Park. |
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| Bison in the road in Yellowstone. Not an uncommon sight. |
We'd seen bison in the distance earlier in the week roll around in the dirt in a couple of other locations in the Park. Never really understood that if the dirt wasn't loose already, the bison were willing to break it up a little so they could get good and dusty.
We got plenty of insight into bison life in four plus days over and above their dust bathing habits and plenty of time watching them eat. When in herds they are clearly protective of calves. We always felt a little skittish even in the car when around young bison, especially when the one 20 feet or so away looked right at us and mooed towards us through the open car window. And there was lots of aggression between males (we assume) manifested in pushing and shoving (mostly with their heads) and chasing each other away.
They also clearly appreciate Yellowstone's thermal spring areas. We saw several groups of bison near some of the steam vents and hot springs in the Park, particularly early in the morning (the temperature swing in Yellowstone in early October is pretty much low to mid-20s to mid-70s each day). It was actually pretty amazing to watch the steam freeze as ice on the bison's backs. I read one sign in the Park that said only the fattiest and furriest bison would survive the Rocky Mountain winters. They think they need those steam vents in early October? Just wait until February or March.
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| More bison in the mist. |
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| Bison with the Great Salt Lake. Antelope Island State Park, Utah. |
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