Bison herds have the right of way.
Traffic jams are the worst, am I right? There’s nothing more infuriating than getting set back a couple of minutes out on the open road, and most of the time, you don’t ever really know why all of the cars in front of your were stopped in the first place. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, “All of that just because of an exit?” out loud while I’m driving.
Typically, I can hold the road rage at bay. And I’d like to think that doing so would be made that much more easier if it was wildlife that was to blame. I know wholeheartedly that I’ve never stopped to admire the hundreds of cars in front of me. But I’d bet I’d be more welcoming (or at least more tolerable) of the traffic if I was watching a bison herd and their young calves trotting across the road.
Animal-induced traffic is more common than you think. If you don’t believe me, you are welcome to check into this never-ending stream of pronghorn migrating across a roadway, or feel free to watch this video of a parade of elk running across a Montana highway. When you live out in the nature, you’re obviously more likely to cross paths with it. Or in this case, have your path stopped.
That’s definitely the case when you are in Yellowstone National Park. If there was a place to go to see North America’s largest land animal, it would be Yellowstone. Somewhere around 5,000 bison call Yellowstone National Park home, and with most of them traveling in herds, encountering a large group on the move like this isn’t out of the ordinary. And to see them stampeding like this is something that would make a trip to the national park very much worth it.
Especially with the herd being made up of both adults and calves. Most of the time with animals (and with humans), there’s a process of growing up, where you have to be guided around and taken care of for a lot of your younger years. You have to spend time learning the ropes, how things work, and what to do and not to do.
Parents of animals in the wild usually raise them until they are able to survive on their own, and then they let them go out into the world and figure things out for themselves. The parenting process for bison generally lasts about six months, and it’s at that point that a bison mother will start to wean off her young and move them to grazing (female calves can sometimes take a little bit longer to become independent).
And the way this video is shot is cinematic to say the least. Instead of moving the camera around, whoever took this footage (which was posted to GoodBullGuided on Instagram) decided to keep the frame centered with the road. Doing so created a cool ambiance and made it to where you never knew whether the next animal to pass on through would be a full grown adult or a baby bison doing its best to keep up.
Check it out:
