Buffalo Dan's Bison

A plastic tarp suspended above the entrance of the camper provides an excellent break from the rain.  With this tarp in place, I am now able to remove my raincoat and boots before entering the camper and avoid getting water on the camper floor.  Life at the ranch isn't exactly one of opulence, but, over time, I have made a few additions to make things somewhat easier.  This post documents my most recent improvements.  I recently added some old bamboo privacy screening to the gravity pressurized hose system I constructed last year. Because I am so isolated out here, there's not such a big need for privacy, but the screening does an excellent job of keeping the icy winds off me when I'm trying to wash up.  Though the water is still unheated, a small propane heater helps some. This screened shelter will come in useful later this year when the mosquitoes and biting flies come out and the temperature is too hot to stay in the camper. I don't think I installed th

A map showing the planned fence addition area with a red and blue dotted line.  The red portion indicates planned fence line area which has been mostly cleared of trees and brush and the blue indicates area ready for fence installation.  For reference, the white line is the property boundary line, the white circles are the posts of our temporary electric fence, and the closely spaced yellow circles are permanent fence.   Aside from clearing trees for more pasture my other primary task has been continuing the fencing of our ranch.  Last year new fencing enabled us to give the bison access to 10 more acres of land and this year we hope to add an additional 27.8 acres of land.  Today I managed to completely finish preparing a 640 foot long section represented in the above map by the blue dotted line at the bottom of the image. Below are some photographs of this section.  This is the first section of future fence line measuring 675 feet long.  To clear this I first used a brush cu

While bison are often seen on foot, an important part of their daily routine involves resting together in a sitting or laying position.  They usually will do this multiple times in a 24-hour period and spend the time either sleeping or ruminating (chewing cud).  Below are several photographic examples of this behavior. Here is the classic bison reclining posture in which they will often be ruminating. An alternative to the classic position is the sitting-up-with-head-down position.  The bison in this picture is probably dozing.  And then there's the complete relaxation position.  Recently, since the restoration of my sickle bar mower, I've been using the mower to mow the grass that grows next to and under the electric fence to prevent the growing grass from shorting the electricity.  In previous years Jess and I had used a brush cutter and the bison mostly ignored us, but the sickle bar mower interests them greatly.  Almost as soon as I begin mowing they will c