Yellowstone is well known for its Buffalo herds. At times they can be massive, however on this trip the largest herd I saw was about 30. Background information
- Can weigh up to 2,000 lbs
- Can be the size of a small car a.k.a similar size to my Honda fit
- Can run over 30 miles per hour
- Injure more people than bears almost every year
Enough with the background information, for those that don’t know this is my second trip to Yellowstone National Park. The first trip I was between 4 – 7 (I don’t remember the exact year), but I don’t remember a lot. But what I do remember are the huge herds of buffalo and the traffic jams they create. In Yellowstone there are really two things that create traffic jams (three if you count the road construction on the one section). The first is a rarer animal siteing such as a bear or wolf. The second and perhaps more common traffic issue is a buffalo in the middle of the road.
This was the first of many buffalo traffic jams. My personal favorite was the one where the buffalo was just standing in the middle of the road. He had this air about him than said I am standing in the middle of the road causing problems because I can and there is nothing you can do about it. Another favorite was the buffalo that would walk down the road in the opposite direction of traffic. These were always funny. It is instances like this that kind of make me wish I was a buffalo so I could spend my life disrupting traffic in every way imaginable. If I was a buffalo, I would try to arrange buffalo at 30 yard intervals in the road to create an obstacle course.
After you have been in the park for over an hour, you have probably seen more than 50 buffalo. After about the second herd of adult buffalo, it gets boring and the pictures all start to look the same. It got to the point where I would say “Oh look more buffalo” and just keep driving. After visiting Mammoth Hot Springs, I decided to drive out to Roosevelt and Tower Falls. As I was driving out there, I kept seen herds of buffalo. I didn’t take any note of these herds until I noticed one herd had about 15 baby buffalo with it. That got my attention, and I was suddenly re-interested in buffalo. I pulled off the side of the road and am about 100 yards away from the buffalo and the babies (calves if you want to get technical). As I am getting the camera out of the car and changing lenses, what I assumed was the bull buffalo (this could have be the lead female, because buffalo keep pretty separated herd of male and female unless its breeding season though I didn’t know this at the time) move himself about halfway between me and babies. I was a little nervous about this but I think the buffalo and I came to an understanding, I would stay where I was and take picture and as long as I didn’t come any closer I was fine.
For more buffalo pictures please click here
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