The Big Bison Roundup

Whooping and hollering, 45 horsemen and horsewomen drive 1,500 bison across the rugged terrain of South Dakota’s Black Hills.

Whooping and hollering, 45 horsemen and horsewomen drive 1,500 bison across the rugged terrain of South Dakota’s Black Hills. The fall morning is cool, but both horses and riders break into a sweat, dust rising as the burly, brown bison thunder into a vale. Deer, antelope and jackrabbits leap out of the herd’s path.

“We’re moving them downwind,” a cowboy shouts to the other riders participating in the 38th annual roundup in Custer State Park near Custer, S.D. (pop. 1,860).

Before the morning is over, the riders will have corralled one of the largest free-ranging bison herds in North America in the biggest roundup of its kind in the world.

In the coming days, the bison will be branded, vaccinated and sorted, and about a third of the animals will be sold—about half at auction in November—providing breeding stock for domestic herds across the United States and Canada. The other animals will be released back into the park to roam free as bison have done in the Black Hills for centuries.

“I was at the roundup a few years ago,” says naturalist Ed Raventon, author of the book Buffalo Country, “and when the buffalo came down the hill, people burst into spontaneous applause. How often do people applaud nature? There’s a power that’s hard to put into words.”

A rare opportunity

Thousands of spectators witness the final minutes of the annual roundup from a safe vantage point, but it’s the park employees—who spend several weeks gathering the animals from the far reaches of the 71,000-acre park—who know the true power of the herd. In fact, a frequent quip among them is, “You can herd buffalo anywhere they want to go.”

On the day before the final push, park employees team up with a group of volunteer riders—20 of whom have been selected as part of a lottery drawing—and a handful of four-wheel-drive vehicles to coax the wild animals into the corrals.

Sometimes their work is dangerous. “Watch that bull!” a horseman shouts. Big bulls, weighing up to 2,500 pounds, are supposed to be left out of the roundup, but sometimes they unintentionally are gathered with the rest of the herd. When that happens, the surly bulls fight their way to the rear of the herd, sometimes goring other bison.

“Things can get nasty fast when that happens,” says Ron Walker, the park’s resource management director. “The worst thing for our riders, though, is when a chunk of the herd—it could be 50 animals—backs right through our line.”

It happened several times during last year’s roundup. But it takes more hardship than that to deter rider Wayne Kummer, of nearby Keystone, S.D. (pop. 311), from being involved in the adventure of a lifetime.

“It’s an adrenaline rush and such a rare opportunity,” says Kummer, an auto mechanic who has participated in the roundup the last four years. “Most of us have lifelong experiences with horses, and we enjoy the tough ride and watching good horses work.”

One memorable part of the roundup for many riders is a prayer for humans, horses and buffalo spoken before mounting, in the tradition of old Lakota-Sioux hunters, who relied on bison for food, clothing and shelter and regarded the animals with religious reverence.

Origins of the herd

The story of the South Dakota herd began with the remarkable family of Fred and Mary Dupuis, he a French-Canadian who wandered west in the 1830s, and she a Lakota-Sioux. The couple married and lived on the prairie east of the Black Hills where, over the winter of 1880-81, two of their sons rode in the last great bison hunt. The sons brought home five live bison, and descendents of those animals were acquired by Scotty Philip, a South Dakota rancher committed to seeing the species saved from extinction. Then South Dakota Gov. Peter Norbeck shared that vision, and in 1913 he established the wildlife preserve that became Custer State Park. The following year some of the Dupuis-Philip herd was shipped in by rail and specially designed wagons to establish the park’s herd.

As the herd grew, park officials saw the need to reduce the population to protect the park’s grassland and to maintain a healthy herd, which numbers about 1,000 animals before spring calving.

In 1966, the park held its first roundup and auction. Since then, about 12,000 animals have been sold to other states, conservation groups and private ranchers, raising more than $10 million for day-to-day operations and improvements in the park.

“When you look at a map showing where they’ve gone, you’ll see there’s Custer State Park buffalo stock in just about every state and across Canada, mostly on private ranches,” says Rollie Noem, park director.

On auction day, bidders arrive at the corrals in pickup trucks pulling stock trailers, hoping to take some prime bison home. Buffalo are in constant motion in the sale ring, as if moving to the rhythm of the auction chant.

“Custer State Park buffalo bull calves—don’t they look good this year?” asks auctioneer Ron Bradeen, prompting nods from the knowledgeable bidders.

Last fall, the animals fetched prices ranging from $350 for a bull calf to $3,200 for a mature bull. Bids vary from year to year, depending on demand and speculation in the ranching industry.

“For someone green in the industry, this sale’s always been a good way to get started,” says Duane Lammers, a Hermosa, S.D. (pop. 315), rancher who has been raising buffalo for 25 years.

When Lammers started ranching, he raised both cattle and buffalo. “I soon saw buffalo had lots of advantages,” he recalls. “I can think of two blizzards where we lost cattle, but the buffalo weren’t affected at all.”

It’s true, he says, that buffalo will face straight into a blizzard instead of turning their backs toward it like cattle. A herd will stop calving until a storm subsides, and buffalo are remarkably adept at rummaging through snow to find grass. Listening to Lammers talk, it’s evident the animals’ admirers are not limited to casual observers or the lottery-winning riders in the annual roundup in Custer State Park.

Buffalo Vs.Bison —Which is it?

Although the words “buffalo” and “bison” are interchangeable in today’s language, this has not always been the case. “Buffalo” has its origins from the Greek word boubalos, referring to mammals such as the African antelope or buffalo of southern Asia. In fact, the use of the word “buffalo” is a misnomer when applied to the North American mammal, with “bison” being the preferred term. It is believed that settlers came upon the North American bison around the 16th century, using the word “buffalo” to describe it.

—Source: American Heritage Dictionary

Paul Higbee is a freelance writer in Spearfish, S.D.

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