Gary Reeder
Bison are dumber than a rock. They will stand there and
Monday, March 05, 2018, 21:05

watch you until you are too close, then they will run off a hundred yards and stand there again. That is why 10 million of them were killed 150 years ago. A bison hunt is a harvest. Kase, Colleen and I hunted in South Dakota on the big ranch where Dances with Wolves was filmed and they were in herds of several hundreds.
Colleen shot hers with her 458 and Kase got his with the 416 Rigby.


We "stalked" up to about 75 yards from them before they started getting antsy. You have to watch for their tails to raise up. When they raise their tails up un an inverted U shape, get the hell back. They are coming at you. Until then, watch the lead cow if you can find her. That is how the millions were killed way back when. The hide hunters would spot the lead cow, shoot her and the rest would mill around and get shot. So most Bison hunts are simply a harvest, not really a hunt. At last count I had taken 9 of them and none were a real hunt. The hardest was a hunt in the Henry mountains of Utah and then the hard part was finding them. I spotted mine mixed in with a bunch of cattle. When I walked out into the field with him, he started walking off at a slow trot. I shot him at about 80 yards, one shot with the 450 GNR.
In the picture I had to wait until he passed the cows before I could take the shot.

Once you get them down, the hard work starts. We were lucky enough to get the rancher to bring his front end loader over and get the bull off the ground.