Day 4 Custer State Park (where the buffalo roam)

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Today we visited Custer State Park (known as South Dakota’s crown jewel). It is one of the nation’s largest parks with over 71,000 acres of spectacular terrain and abundance of wildlife. This is rated as one of the top 5 scenic byways in all the USA.



We drove the 18 mile Wildlife Loop Road known as a wildlife wonderland. It consisted of rolling prairies, pine covered mountains, lakes, streams and granite spires. Lots of switch backs but we avoided the roads with tunnels because Joy was too nervous. We saw herds of bison, bands of burrows, white tail deer, prairie dogs, and wild turkey. Elusive to us were the elk, antelope, mountain lions, big horn sheep, mountain goats and coyotes. Maybe we will go back another day.



Our main reason for going was to see the bison. There was once millions of bison or Tatanka as the North American Indians called them roaming this area. This year there are around 1,300. Each September the buffalo are round up and the size of the herd is adjusted according to the predicted availability of grassland forage and rainfall as the park does not supplement their food supply. The maximum Custer Park can sustain 1,450.



Our first traffic jam was with the burros. They refused to move off the road and traffic had to drive around them. Our next traffic jam was the bison. The adult bison are about 6ft tall and weigh 2,000 lbs. You are required to wait for them to move off the road. There were many bison along the route but this was the largest herd we saw.

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Photos

Buffalo Road Block
Must have been over 100 buffalo in this spot. Vehicles had to wait until buffalo's crossed the road.

Comments

[Finley]

Bison
Thank you for putting these pictures on your blog. You got some great ones of the wildlife. How big was the worlds biggest bison? Finley