Chasing the Rut: North American Bison

Before we can talk about these animals, I feel the need to get something straight.

They are not, and should never be confused with, buffalo.

There it is. I feel better already.

This is one of those things that tends to drive me crazy. Bison are not buffalo. Your ancestors got it all wrong. Yes, I realize we have the buffalo nickel and Buffalo New York and Buffalo Bill Cody and even the buffalo burger. But just because people keep saying the same wrong thing over and over again doesn’t make it right. Buffalo do not live in North America. Buffalo live in Africa (cape buffalo) and Asia (water buffalo). Bison are quite different.

Bison are the first species in North America to kick off the annual rut. Come August, things are really starting to heat up for this species. Most of the year, cows and bulls remain separated. When you travel to places like Yellowstone, Grand Tetons National Park, or Badlands National Park at any other time of the year, those great and vast herds of animals you see are primarily cows, calves (red dogs), and teenagers of both sexes. Though you may see a few bull bison in the herds wandering about, the real contenders, the breeding bulls, are off on their own and do not begin to make an appearance again until August. 

Bull bison are like most ungulates (hoofed mammals). They tend to separate themselves by sex most of the year. The females hang together in massive herds (nanny herds). The large breeding bulls, on the other hand, either go it alone or group up in very small “bachelor herds.” And for the really big and dominant bulls, you tend to find them either solitary or with only one or two other similarly sized brutes. 

Then the rut happens. The hormones start flowing. And like bull elephants in musth, suddenly these great thunder beasts begin to emerge from the ether, drunk on testosterone, full of spit and swagger, sauntering back to the herds in August. 

While every animal that enters the rut is an informal group of animals researchers like to call “tournament species,” given that they must fight for the right to breed, no other animal’s success in life, their ability to pass down their DNA to future generations, is more dependent upon size, strength, power, and sheer dominance as that of bison.

Fact: of all the calves that are sired each year within any given herd, typically 1 single bull bison is responsible for a solid 50% of all those babies. Very few bison actually get the opportunity to mate each year, and many bulls will live and die without ever having the chance. 

Typically, a bull bison will first begin attending a female he is interested in. If he is lucky enough to mate with her, then he will continue to follow her around for a few days to ensure no one else has the opportunity to and hopefully secure his genetic line for the year. 

But success or failure here all depends on whether or not a cow is interested – and they have a really clever way of getting rid of unwanted attention. 

If a cow communicates that she is not interested but the bull persists, she simply takes off running through the middle of the herd. The unwanted male tries to keep up. But in the process both cow and bull draw the attention of every other male that has come to breed. 

Since bison are a tournament species – meaning they fight for the right to hangout with the ladies – the other large bulls immediately rush in and surround the other bull that the cow is trying to get rid of. 

From the other bull bison’s perspective, this is their chance to show the fleeing cow that they are bigger and better and meaner than her annoying suitor is. And if that suitor wants to keep after the cow, then he is forced to battle every single bull that has circled him first. 

For the cow, the problem is solved. 

For the wildlife photographer, if you recognize this behavior, if you see this beginning to unfold, you can get into position and photograph one fight after another as the suitor battles his way out of the ring.

For an animals that is so iconic and so often photographed, finding new an unique ways of portraying this species is one of the biggest challenges for a wildlife photographer today. With this particular photograph, a small shaft of late afternoon light was filtering across the meadow through the canopy of cottonwood trees that grew along the edge of a small creek. The background was in deep shade already thanks to the nearby forest. By slightly underexposing the image in camera, it was just a matter of waiting for one of the bull bison to walk into that shaft of light. From there, the limitations of the camera’s dynamic range - the number of stops of light it can record between featureless white and featureless black - meant that as long as I exposed to retain all the detail in the highlighted fur and horns, the shadowed areas would fall into deep shadow to create this chiaroscuro style image.

Wherever bison live, they are always the most dangerous animal around. More people are injured by bison in places like Yellowstone than all other species combined. Bears? Eh, the chance is infinitesimally small unless you doing something stupid like try to take a selfie with a mother grizzly and her two cubs. In fact, the National Park Service says you have a 1 in 2.2 million chance of being injured by a bear – which, for the record, you have a 1 in 366 chance of being injured in a car accident each year. In other words, it’s far more dangerous trying to drive around a place like Yellowstone National Park than it is to hike there.

The problem with bison is that they tend to be where a lot of people want to be – places like Old Faithful for instance. And for some reason that I still cannot wrap my brain around, we long ago outlawed natural selection of our own species. Thus, when you stick 5 million people, for which we can say probably 90% are not the sharpest crayon in the box, around 2,000lbs of wild bison, people get hurt. They get gored. They get tossed into the trees like rag-dolls. And it always ends up on YouTube. 

Bison are like every animal on the planet I have ever spent time around. They just want to mind their own business. They want to respectfully tend to their own lives. And when you begin to do something they are not keen on, they do everything in their power to communicate that with you long before anything goes sideways. 

When I say that they are like every animal I have worked with in this sense, I mean it. Whether bison, bear, snake, or crocodile – everybody tries to communicate with us to the best of thier ability. Other animals are paying attention. Other animals know what it all means. But us humans, on the other hand, seem to be so far removed from the natural world these days that we stand around with slap happy smiles on our faces, cell phones in hand, taking selfies to our own graves. 

So, what does a bison do to tell you they’re uncomfortable? They stick their tales in the air. Simple as that. 

There are a few other cues, but for the uninitiated, this is the big one you want to watch for. When a bison raises its tail in the air, this means one of two things is imminent: either a charge, or a discharge. Either way, you need to back up. 

Different positions of a raised tail means different things.

Uncomfortable with the situation? The flag is sort of half mast.

A warning that can translate to a life or death situation? The flag is raised high - sometimes even curling over the back of the bison.

Ethology, that is to say, the study of animal behavior, is important for any and all serious wildlife photographers for this reason. Not only does understand such behavior keep you safe, it also allows you to anticipate the behavior of animals for the purpose of creating photographs.

When it comes to photographing the bison rut, keep in mind the atmosphere. And, by atmosphere I mean all the stuff in the air around them. The bison rut comes at a time when things are very dry and very dusty in the West. When these brutes start banging heads, they can really kick up great clouds of dust around them. Shot with frontal lighting, all of this dust in the air will be lost to the other details of the photograph. With extreme side lighting or back lighting however, you will be able to take advantage of all the dust by making it a compositional element unto itself. 

Personally, I prefer to photograph bison in the winter versus the summer. Watching these bulls bang heads is an extraordinary thing to witness. But it’s the white canvas of winter that is the most appealing for my artistic tastes. 

With this said though, the younger bulls but heads with each other year round. You can find and photograph herds of bison in the dead of winter and still come home with images of them fighting. As a still photograph, versus video, we capture a split second in time. The other details and context leading up to and unfolding afterwards are lost. And so, many of the “rutting” or “fighting” photographs you see of bison are most often younger bulls who are “sparring” with each other. And it’s for this reason that those types of images can also be created in the snow.

Locations . . .

Badlands National Park and Wind Cave National Park

I am grouping these two parks together because of how close they are to each other. If you’re going to travel to Badlands National Park for wildlife, and believe it or not, this place is an awesome place to be for wildlife, then you might as well check out Wind Cave as well. They are roughly 70 miles from each other. Which, by Western standards, is about the distance one would be willing to travel for a good cup of coffee. Both of these national parks can be found in the state of South Dakota and hold healthy populations of bison. 

I prefer these national parks over Yellowstone for bison due to the lack of people. The visitors are not there specifically for wildlife. And there is a very good chance you will be the only wildlife photographer you see prowling about in search of images. 

The National Bison Range

As the name implies, this place is all about the bison. This is a National Wildlife Refuge that caters specifically to these animals. The topography is rolling and high prairie. There are loads of bison. And you will have the world to yourself as a photographer. 

The National Bison Range is located between Missoula and Kalispell, Montana. This is great place, off the beaten path, and the rut here is legendary. 

Yellowstone National Park

I’m sure this is an obvious place to most. Yellowstone National Park was critical in bringing this species back from the edge of extinction and today everyone associates this is the place with bison – especially Hayden and the Lamar Valley. Me, I steer clear of Yellowstone these days except for January, February, May, and late October. All these months have something special to offer me, and they also happen to be times with some of the lowest visitation in the park. For the bison rut, however, which occurs in August, which occurs during peak tourist season, I travel elsewhere.