A rancher explains how to move a bison herd, critiquing common mistakes like starting from the front without enough pressure. He covers horse handling, managing aggressive cows, and why bison line up into the wind while grazing.
The ranch manager is trying to learn how to get these bison started going from the front. Some mistakes made, but at least he knows it can be done. This first little shot, he was too far away. Getting in a little bit closer. And there he's getting them to go by him. He should have started out more to the front, but they're gonna go. This clip here, he's getting them started, but he didn't start all the way at the front. And he's not really getting close enough to get a lot of pressure on them. These here, he got a lot of pressure started, they started to go, then he turned off. And what did they do? They slowed down, stopped. Person needs to go all the way by them to keep the motion going. It also works better if you've got some lateral movement in your horse so you can keep the horse bent into the animals as you're going by them. It'll create more speed. Once again, he's going in too early instead of getting the front going. See, these bison will go up and they'll just stop at the other group. They don't wind up being bunched up without the motion from the front to draw them. The others aren't starting as fast. When he turned right there, he just stopped the ones that were starting to come up. Really needs to be going all the way to the front. And there he did. When he turned too early, it slowed those down. Had to change gears here as Some of the cows were starting to get snotty about their calves, and rather than let them get too aggressive, we changed speed. I'm gonna have one person on the side just putting enough pressure on them just to get them to turn around. Another person going back and forth across the back. And they'll pick up— you can't see them, they're way out in the distance. We got a 3rd group that's out to the top right of the screen. As he comes across these from a little bit to the front, these are going to pick up and take off pretty good. Right there. That man right there had a whip that he was using just a little bit. Just enough to keep their attention, but not enough to be aggressive with it. I could say part of the problem on this is there's things that we could be doing that, uh, I can't do because of the lack of handle on horses. But we did get the motion in there, starting to come out. She comes back up. See, they start going before he gets there to go by him. Other than getting on the fight or flight mode a little bit too early, bison basically have the same Instincts to pressure and release that cows do. You just have to be a little bit more precise with it. Got up there and just kind of stood there for a minute just to nudge them just a little bit, slow them down a little bit, because we didn't want them just running off, at least not till they really get turned where they're going to go to the other bison, which is going to happen here in just a second. And there they go, right straight towards the other group of bison. I don't mind them taking off like that when they're going the direction that you want them to go, and the speed control will come when they get more handling on them. Now this is what I found interesting. I'm not sure why they did it this way. These bison are strung out in a line grazing into the wind. Something I've heard about, but I've never actually seen it till this time. It'd be interesting to figure out exactly why they're doing it. Is it a lack of feed or what? I'm not really sure.
