Buffalo Round-Up at Custer State Park

Monday morning the kids and I joined our friend Denise and about 12,000 other people to watch the 42nd annual Buffalo Round-Up at Custer State Park in the Black Hills. Custer maintains one of the largest buffalo herds in the country. Each fall they round them up to immunize them, brand them, and sell some of them off to buffalo ranches. The park staff has learned how to time it right so that spectators can come watch the final few miles as the buffalo come over a rise (#1), through a few small valleys (#2), into a gate (see bottom of #2), down one last valley and into a corral area (#3). The spectators are on top of two hills with the final valley between the hills. The people are all safely behind a fence of course. We left home before 7 and were there by 8 but still had a pile of people in front of us. Lydia was in the kid backpack and the boys took turns on Denise's shoulders or being held up by me. After the buffalo are in the corral area we could walk down and see them up close as they took a well deserved drink at a stock tank (#4).

It was awesome! There is nothing quite like watching 1,000 buffalo come charging over a hill at you. They are magnificent animals and it was amazing to see something like that. The boys are currently enamored with buffalo. We might wander back down to Custer in a few weeks when they have the public auction and sell off some of the herd just so we can visit the buffalo again. If you're ever around the last weekend in September there is an entire weekend of festivities including arts and crafts, pancake breakfast, chili cook-offs and the actual round-up on the Monday morning that we'd recommend seeing at least once. Giddy-Up! :)

(Note: Clicking on the pictures will make them larger than full screen and you want to you can see the massive number of buffalo better.)