Bozeman Family Captures Video of Stampeding Buffalo Herd
A Bozeman family found themselves observing a scene that few people have been fortunate to see or experience in modern times: a bison herd stampeding in the wild. In the video that you can watch below, the family captured about a hundred bison in Yellowstone National Park stampeding along Slough Creek.
The video is from September of 2018, and the family who shot it said you could actually "feel the ground shake." It must have been scary while at the same time, awe-inspiring.
The American buffalo, often referred to as bison, were once said by Native Americans to roam in herds as vast as a day's ride on horseback. Their numbers at one time were estimated to be between 40-60 million. However, Buffalo hunters killed the majestic animals for their hides and bones, reducing the animals numbers to just a few hundred by the late 1880s.
This is believed to be one of the main reasons that the Plains Indians led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Red Cloud surrendered their people to the U.S. Government and moved to reservations, as the buffalo was a prominent source of their food.
While nowhere near their numbers from the 1800s, the American buffalo has made a modest comeback in the past hundred years. Today, there are estimated to be around 300,000 bison in the United States. Only about 30,000 are in public herds, while 250,000 are in private herds. Southwest Montana rancher Ted Turner owns one of the largest private herds in the country. According to the Turner Ranches website, Turner owns some 51,000 bison that he keeps on his multiple ranches, one of which is just outside Bozeman, Montana.