Master of the Autumn Prairie

The buffs are already sporting a nice thick new winter coat of fur.

White Buffalo

Yellowstone Bison

More shots I'd taken at Yellowstone a few years back. Without a doubt the absolute most dominating creature in the park are the Bison. They are every where. One morning I'd even seen a bull casually passing the day in our campground.


It's August, the time of the Rut. The bison cow is getting some serious lovin' in the form of licking and groom from a bull who's singled her out to be his own. And this Bison bull has only one thing on his mind! Each mature bull will pick out one female to be the object of his affection, never leaving her side and never letting any other bull get any ideas that she's up for grabs. If another does get ideas, that's when tempers flare, leading to anything from a mock charge on up to full scale warfare between rivals. Seldom are the battles lethal, but they can often become serious, and injuries are common. Occasionally when I young bull takes on an old monarch and succeeds in driving him off, this will mean the end of the old bull's days of dominance, spending the rest of his life sucluded as a lone hermit.

Prehistoric Bison

Paleo Bison / Bison latifrons is an extinct species of bison that lived in North America during the Pleistocene. Also known as the giant bison, or ice age bison it reached a shoulder height of 8.5 feet, and a horn spread that spanned over 6.5 feet. The species was much larger than today's species of bison and it is estimated that it would have weighed well over a ton, standing as much as 8 1/2 feet at the shoulder. They would have been very similar to modern bison in appearance, only larger, with their most distinct feature being the long set of horns protruding outward from the skull. It was perhaps America's earliest bison species.

Several times during the Pleistocene epoch the first bison made the journey from Asia to North America by migrating across the existing land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. Such species include the modern bison, Bison bison; the small bison, Bison antiquus; the Eurasian steppe bison, Bison priscus; and the large broad-horned bison, Bison latifrons.

Nearly 75 percent of all the megafauna that existed in North America disappeared from the face of the continent by the close of the last ice age. The bison species managed to hold on during this last mass extinction, eventually to thrive in vast herds as North America's largest extant land mammal.

Bison latifrons appeared by 500,000 years ago in North American and lived alongside these other bison species until going extinct some 20,000 years ago according to scientists. Their fossils are scarce, found only in late Pleistocene layers.

The first appearance of Bison antiquus in North America was around 250,000 years ago.
This line may have led to modern American Plains Bison, with this speciation occurring around 5,000 years ago. European bison may be descendants of Pleistocene bison that returned to Europe from North America.

2,000 years ago American Plains bison / Bison bison reached its maximum range. An estimated 50 million bison inhabited the continent when Europeans arrived on the continent.

It wasn't until the 1830s, when European settlers started to expand westward, that the modern American bison's range shrank and it's existence became seriously threatened. By the mid 1800's, bison became the target of large-scale extermination and were nearly extinct by the turn of the century. Only an estimated 300 wild bison remained.

Today, thanks to the foresight of a very few enlightened individuals, the modern American bison was pulled back from the brink, surviving in two subspecies: Bison bison bison (American Plains Bison) and Bison bison athabascae (American Wood Bison).

Today, the largest free-ranging populations occur at Mackenzie Sanctuary, Wood Buffalo National Park and Slave River lowlands in Canada and at Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

There is also one surviving European bison species, genetically very close to the American bison: Bison bonasus (European Bison), until recently made up of three subspecies: Bison bonasus bonasus (Lowland Bison), Bison bonasus caucasicus (extinct in 1925) and Bison bonasus hungarorum (extinct Hungarian Bison).

Bison Herds of Custer

Custer State Park is home to a herd of 1400 free range bison (slightly lower in the winter after the herd is culled by the park managment). Next to Yellowstone, the herds at Custer (very close-by but kept seperate from the remnant herd of Wind Cave N.P.) offer some of the best viewing of Bison in their natural habitat in the U.S. Almost always within easy viewing range along the wildlife loop road, as was this herd.

Looks Like Trouble

Bison can run up to 35 mph with stamina exceeding that of a horse, and easily jump over a 6 foot fence with surprising agility for such a hulking beast.

Custer State Park

Free roaming herd one foggy morning at Custer St. Park, South Dakota

Magpie the Scavenger on Buff Skull

Mr. Bison