Bison Jam
Bison jams, which occur when bison are on or close to the road, are quite a common site in YNP. The more exciting involving many bison on the road right near your vehicle and the more frustrating ones sometimes involving miles of cars backed up because of habituated animals using the roads as travel corridors. This instance was a little different in that it was dark and the bison were a little more excited due to the park ranger making noises at the animals to clear the road. I snapped this photo just before the red and blue lights were turned on. This photo was taken from inside the safety of a vehicle.
The American bison is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds. Their range once roughly comprised a triangle between the Great Bear Lake in Canada's far northwest, south to the Mexican states of Durango and Nuevo León, and east along the western boundary of the Appalachian Mountains.
comments (10)
I'll be hiking in the park, or fishing on a river, with nothing and no one around me, and then I'll look up and there will be a bison only 30-20, sometimes only 10 yards from me. Far too close! And yet, I never even heard them walk up on me, and I am very observant and always watching and listening for stuff like that.
Something so big should not be able to move so quietly, but it is uncanny how ghost-like they can be. Some of the people on our crew call them just that - ghosts. Posted 9 years ago