The rut is on

Posted 8/15/24

While not intended for their human audience, the reverberating guttural warnings from massive bull bison during the rut in Yellowstone National Park should be enough to let visitors know these …

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The rut is on

A massive bison bull protects a cow while stirring up some dust Saturday in the Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park. Warning other bulls to stay away, the massive mammals often fight — sometimes to the death — for the right to breed with cows that come into estrus. The rut will likely continue in the park into September.

Tribune photo by Mark Davis

A cow bison nurses her calf near the banks of the Yellowstone River in the Hayden Valley. Calves nurse with their mothers for the first 6 months of life before they are weaned onto a diet of grass. Male calves can become completely independent of their mothers at this point, and females usually do a few months later. Young bison may remain with their mother’s herd or venture out to find another, according to the National Park Service.

Tribune photo by Mark Davis

A massive bison bull wallows in the dust to show aggression Saturday during the bison rut in the Hayden Valley of Yellowstone National Park. Mature bulls will join mixed-sex groups to compete for mating opportunities within the herd. This is when the mood of the herd changes and the deep bellows of bull bison can be heard across the landscape, according to the National Park Service. Bulls begin to court females through a variety of behaviors such as sniffing female genital areas and face-to-face lip curls. Wallowing behaviors also increase, where males will roll violently on the ground to display aggression.

Tribune photo by Mark Davis

Posted Thursday, August 15, 2024 8:25 am

By Mark Davis

While not intended for their human audience, the reverberating guttural warnings from massive bull bison during the rut in Yellowstone National Park should be enough to let visitors know these powerful wild animals are not to be challenged.

The rut lasts from mid-July through September, according to park officials. Bulls will mate with multiple females over the course of a single season, however female bison (cows) will mate with only one bull.

“It's important to remember that during rut, bulls are on high alert and can get aggravated easily and the fights are not limited to off-pavement areas,” park officials said in a recent post on social media.

Those living in or near the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem know better than to challenge the massive beasts. Yet, of the millions of visits to the park a year, there are a few who are willing to get within range of the unpredictable animals — especially during the rut. Most of those who do have a physical encounter with the one-ton behemoths come to regret their decisions as they’re being toted to the nearest hospital — often in an extremely expensive trip by helicopter.

On average, there are one to two reported incidents of bison injuring visitors annually. The most in recent history was five injuries in 2015. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, over the history of the national park (dating back to 1872) two people have been killed as a result of bison encounters.

Last June, shortly after the park opened all its gates for the year, an 83-year-old woman from South Carolina was gored and seriously injured by a bison that was defending its space, park officials said at the time.

It is so frequent that a Cody pizza restaurant is named Tossers and features a logo of a tourist being tossed by a bison.

When viewed from the relative safety of a vehicle or the minimum distance of 25 yards (75 feet) prescribed by park regulations, the bison rut is one of the most memorable and accessible events at the nation’s first national park. Of course, it’s never close enough for those armed with cellphone cameras. Few realize the species is agile, can spin around quickly, jump high fences, are strong swimmers and can run at a top speed of 35 mph.

“Bison are unpredictable and can run three times faster than humans,” according to a publication by Yellowstone Public Affairs Officer Morgan Warthin after a recent bison encounter that resulted in serious injuries.