Ever since I was a kid, I had always wanted to hunt bison. Of all North American animals, this animal, to me, symbolizes the great west. An added bonus is that I like bison meat. I had been trying to draw a tag in several states with no luck until this year. In August, I got an email notice that I was successful for a non-trophy tag in Custer State Park in South Dakota.
For this year’s hunt, the number of hunters was limited to nine and the season ran from the middle of October to the middle of November. I was asked to submit four dates that would work best for me, and after doing so, I was notified that my first choice was accepted, October 18th.
My wife and I drove out two days before the scheduled hunt date to visit Mount Rushmore and the surrounding sights. The weather was perfect, and due to this being the off-season, there were no big crowds. We spent some time at Custer State Park and saw bison roaming throughout the park.
The morning of the hunt, we drove to the corrals and met Chad Kremer who was leading the hunt. He is the Bison Herd Manager at the park. He went over the guidelines, and we talked a little about the best shot placement to quickly kill a bison. We all got in the truck, including my wife and dog, and we drove around looking for the correct age class bison, a 2 to 3-year-old bull. We found several groups of bulls in this class, and I saw one bull that looked good. We got out of the truck and had to work around to get a good position for a shot. I got positioned, but there were five bulls moving together and I had to wait for them to separate enough to get a clean shot. I took the shot as my bull was separated from the others. After the shot, he walked off about 50 yards and lay down. He expired in less than a minute.
This is not a difficult hunt by any means. There are a lot of bison in this park and they are not too concerned with people, but they don’t just stand there looking at you either.
After the bull died, we had to get the other bulls to move away. They stayed close, but after a while, they moved off. We took some pictures, which was made easier by the way the bull had laid down when he died. He laid with his legs under him and not on his side, perfectly set up for pictures. I don’t know how we would have gotten him in this position if he was on his side. After the picture taking, we started to take care of the bull. Chad has this task down to a science. He used his truck’s hay mover attachment. He hooked up to the bull’s front legs and lifted the bull up with the hydraulic hoist of the attachment. With the bull pulled up in the air, we field dressed him. He then repositioned the attachments to the back legs and pulled the bull onto the flat bed of the truck. Pretty slick.
We drove back to the corrals where they have a hoist to pull the bull up to do the work of skinning and removing the meat. This is where the work started. My wife and I did this work mostly ourselves. It took us roughly three hours to complete this task. I filled three large coolers that I had already iced down the night before with boned out meat. I had another meat box that I used for the cape and hide.
Since this hunt only takes half a day, I would recommend you do the hunt in the morning, particularly if you plan on taking care of the meat yourself. There are meat processors in the area, but I think you would still need to get the animal to them. Another problem you may have using a local meat processor is the amount of time to get the processing done. If you use a local processor, I would recommend you allow two or three days after you kill your bull in getting your meat back from the processor.
As it was, we drove back home to Illinois the next day. I had the meat processed at a local processor near my home.
All in all, this was a great hunt. Obviously, this is not one of those hardcore backpack hunts that you are used to reading about, but it certainly was a lot of fun. I have a freezer and a half full of great eating meat.
South Dakota Bison Hunting
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