You Herd It Here At The Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup

I’m crouched in the bed of a pickup truck, hanging on for dear life as we lurch across the rolling prairies of South Dakota, hot on the trail of a thundering herd of bison. Bull whips crack and whoops and hollers rise above drumming hoofbeats. Every now and then, a horse and rider break out of the dust, working to move a stray animal back toward the group. It’s all part of the Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup, which unfolds in southwest South Dakota late each September.

Visitors can watch from viewing areas set up on ridges, but I got an even closer look via a bone-jarring ride in one of a dozen or so trucks that followed the herd as it made its way toward holding pens.

First, some background. Even though the event is called a buffalo roundup, Custer State Park is home to about 1,400 bison, not buffalo. They are different animals. Bison have humps and huge, blocky heads and are covered with thick, shaggy fur. They can survive in harsh conditions, like those found on the plains of the American West during winter. True buffalo — such as water buffalo and Cape buffalo — live in warmer climates like South Asia and Africa and tend to have longer horns. Most folks here at Custer State Park just call the bulky beasts that range over the park’s 71,000 acres buffalo, and the annual roundup is one of the best places in the world to see them and learn about them.

“The buffalo is the icon animal of the prairie,” says Jason Gooder, operations supervisor for Custer State Park. “There’s no other place you can see all the animals together running at one time.” But the park can sustain only so many head of bison. Park officials use the annual roundup to gather the herd, vaccinate the animals, and sort out about 500 animals to sell at auction. The rest are released back into the park, where the females will calve the following spring.

Sixty lucky cowhands — 20 chosen by random drawing from hundreds that apply, and 40 more selected by the governor’s office, including some Custer State Park staff — participate in the annual roundup. It’s a bring-your-own-horse event. Riders are divided into four teams that steer the herd up and over hills covered with undulating knee-deep grass, across creeks, and into the holding pens in the flats near the park’s new Bison Center. 

Today, more than 22,000 visitors get up at dawn and head into the park, where admission fees are waived on roundup day, for the spectacle. They gather at two viewing areas atop ridgelines, waiting to watch the herd thunder through the valley beneath them. Afterward, they stick around to watch wranglers vaccinate, brand, and sort the animals.

In November, buyers from around the country will come to the park to bid up to $1,900 for mature bred cows and $3,000 for 2-year-old bulls. Some of the animals will go to supplement private herds; others are sold for meat. Here in South Dakota, residents know that ground bison makes good burgers, chili, meatloaf, and tacos; and bison steaks are lean and tasty. Following this year’s roundup, visitors will be invited to buy tickets to a picnic lunch of barbecue bison sandwiches.

Bison Basics

At the park’s Bison Center, which opened in 2022, visitors can learn about the herd, one of the world’s largest publicly owned. They might even meet a burro. Dozens of them congregate there, looking for handouts. At a coinciding art festival inside the park, visitors can buy everything from stained glass bison suncatchers to Christmas tree ornaments and metal signs that say “Don’t Pet the Fluffy Cows.”

 One of the things you might learn from the educational exhibits in the center is that the park’s bison trace their roots to a herd owned by Scottish-born rancher James “Scotty” Philip, who lived near Pierre. Philip acquired a herd of bison from a man named Peter Dupree, whose son had rescued five calves from a hunt in 1881. In 1914, 36 descendants of those bison came to the park, which had been established two years earlier as a wildlife preserve in the Black Hills. As that herd thrived, park managers realized the land couldn’t sustain the expanding numbers. They began holding roundups to keep the population at a manageable level. In the 1950s, park management brought in more bison from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to add genetic diversity. The first auction took place in 1966.

Riders chosen to participate in the roundup get a friendly reminder beforehand: The roundup is not a trail ride. They should make sure their horses don’t spook around bison, which smell — and act — differently than cattle. Horses need shoes, and riders should be prepared to run in rough country. They might have to jump fallen trees and cross streams, too. “Most horses are exposed to cattle, but when are you exposed to bison? It’s a totally different experience,” Gooder says. 

Riders need experience too, says Jim Straight, district park supervisor. “You need to have a good seat and understand your horse and the animals as well.” Participants come a day early for an orientation ride, when they get an up-close look at the bison and a feel for the terrain they’ll be riding. 

I get to the park early the morning of the roundup — the 58th annual —and watch as the riders listen to a safety briefing and bow their heads for a prayer. An hour before the start, Colby Brown, a 31-year-old beekeeper from South Dakota, leads his horse, Blue, which has one blue eye and one brown eye, out of a pen and mounts up. “It kind of makes you feel nervous or excited knowing it’s dangerous,” Brown says, stroking Blue’s nose. “It’s something I always wanted to do but not something you get to do every day.”

Brown has never ridden in the roundup before this year, but he and his wife found out in June that they’d been drawn. (His wife had to withdraw when she learned she was pregnant.) They began preparing by bringing their horses to the park to ride. He still remembers their first encounter with a bison. “It was a big bull,” he says. “We stepped sideways and thought, Whoa, what is that? It’s pretty intimidating. Bison are a lot bigger than a horse.”

Chasing The Herd

At 8:30 a.m. I climb into the back of a truck with a half-dozen other observers. Our line of vehicles rolls up a gravel road and into the grassy hills, where the bison are contentedly grazing. A cluster of riders stand nearby, waiting for the signal that the roundup has begun. 

“It’s like a three-hour adrenaline rush,” Milt Stengel, a 73-year-old cowboy with a blue checked shirt, a horse named Hillbilly, and a mustache straight out of a western movie, tells me. He has ridden in the roundup eight times, and, he says, it never gets old. “These are South Dakota animals. I don’t know how to put it in words — they’re an American icon.”

No human fatalities have ever occurred during the roundup, but riders have been injured, and once a horse was gored by a bison. A few years ago, longtime participant Bob Lantis punctured a lung and broke four ribs in a fall. But he’s back this year. “You never know what’s going to happen,” Straight, the park supervisor, says. “There’s lots of anticipation. Everybody’s excited. The horses are excited.”

And with a whistle and a shout, the roundup begins. 

Taking part — even as an observer —is a heart-pounding experience. We bounce around prairie dog holes. At one point, we crash through a creek bed as two cowgirls push a stray bison back into the mix. The action unfolds over about 90 minutes, with the bison and riders covering about five miles. Point of fact: Bison can run 35 miles per hour.

The riders work the herd, leaving the bigger bison behind because they’ll just rile things up. It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was once like on the Great Plains of North America, where an estimated 30 million bison once roamed free. By the late 1800s, they were nearly driven to extinction. This herd is small compared to the groups that once lived here, but to watch them move across the grasslands makes me feel like I’ve gone back in time.

As the herd spills down a hillside and funnels toward the holding pens, a cheer rises from high on the ridge, where the sun glints off hundreds of vehicles parked there. Riders carrying the U.S. and South Dakota state flags sweep past, and the bison seem to know they’re the center of attention. They slow down, and as they reach the holding area, a few of them kneel in the dirt, then roll over, dust rising around them. 

Afterward, Tiffany Kaiser hops off and pats her horse. “It’s a rush,” she says. “I guess it always makes me think of Lonesome Dove.” Even though I was riding in a pickup and not on a horse, I know what she means. 

“It’s a lot of fun chasing buffalos on a horse,” Straight tells me later. “It’s one of the coolest things you could ever do in the world.” 

The 2024 Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup and Arts Festival is scheduled for September 26 – 28. The official day of the Buffalo Roundup is Friday, September 27, 2024. For more information, visit gfp.sd.gov.

From our May/June 2024 issue.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy of Travel South Dakota (Attributed Photographer: Byron Banasiak)