Custer State Park
The park is South Dakota’s largest and its first state park, and is home to a herd of 1500 free roaming bison. It is famous for getting up close and personal with bison, the begging Burros, and other wildlife.
The park has an annual buffalo roundup and auction in September (this coming weekend), in which the bison in the park are rounded up, with several hundred sold at auction so that the remaining number of animals will be compatible with the rangeland forage.
OK, so before I continue, lets get this out-of-the-way, Bison or Buffalo? Are they the same? Well, calling a bison a buffalo is inaccurate, but a common. It’s so common, in fact, that we sometimes use the two interchangeably. But if you really want to know the difference between a buffalo and a bison, the American Bison is native to North and South America and Europe, while the other two buffalo species reside in Africa and Asia. Bison and buffalo share the same family, but there are over 38 types of buffalo and, unlike bison, many of them have been domesticated. I see more “bison” than “buffalo” ground hamburger in the market, so Bison for me.
Back to the park…..
We went to the visitor center as always, and while talking to a Ranger, I asked where to see the bison in the park. She stated the cowboys had already “pre-rounded-up” all but 50 bison into an area out of view of the visitors. So all we can see throughout the whole park are those left in the corral. They do this in advance as they have a tough time “herding” them for the big annual roundup which draws over 10000 people. Maybe they should hire the Indians that had no problem getting the bison to jump over cliffs… Just saying.
So we drive the wildlife loop through the park and there are NO bison…. We saw many “wallows”. A wallow is a dug-up patch of ground the bison sleeps and rolls around in. This wallowing, fends off the biting flies and removes tufts of molted fur. Bison also leave their scent in the wallow. And during the rut, bull bison wallow to display their strength and vigor.
About half way through the park after seeing hundreds of prairie dog towns, there are a few cars stopped in front of us…. The Begging Burros where blocking the road. We got out and interacted with the mules (being nice here). There were about 30 burros just walking around, we took pictures, petted, and of course talked to them. In the prairie in front of us where hundreds of prairie dogs watching us from their holes in the ground. While over looking the prairie, we could see two cowboys riding their horses on the ridge. They must have startled a heard of Prong Horn Deer, as about 20-30 of them came running from our right to left about 300 yards out front. Wow, to kool they are fast. Almost too much to look at in a good way.
We continue the drive before one of those burros knocks our mirrors off the BFT and we decide to “off-road” up a hill. After a mile, we see a pile of bones, yep must have been a bison calf that died last winter.
What a great park this is, as we continue on to Crazy Horse about 10 miles up the road.