Waaaaa! I am so excited to tell you about bison.
After Mel’s Buggy Ride in Ohio, we drove to a small bison ranch in Indiana. This was where we were going to park and sleep. I have always been so curious about bison.
There is a cool app called Harvest Host. It’s great for self contained vehicles like ours (where we don’t need hook ups, water, or toilet). Being a member of this group, we can make arrangements with the hosts on the site and stay at their businesses for a night, usually for free, in exchange for supporting their business. It does not save us money, since we always find amazing things to buy. We have stayed at golf courses, wineries, farms, etc... across the country. A whole new world opened up to us when we gave up staying at typical hotels.
Eel River Bison Ranch & Event Center, in Indiana was the place. Our hosts, husband and wife team Erick and Tonya, showed us their new ranch. They put everything on the line and bought this place a couple of years before Covid hit. It was so cool to get the inside scoop on bison, bison ranch business, and event space too. What a fun combo, to have an event center, with bison roaming in the background.
I got to have all of my questions answered, and more.
Ready?
Q1. How do bison have sex? Does the male actually mount the female standing up?
Yes! Therefore when they bought their female bison, they had to look at her hind legs to make sure that she can withstand the weight of a bull. 🤷🏻♀️ Who knew? Aren’t you glad I asked?
Q2. Question 1 led to an obvious question 2: How long is a bison’s penis?
THIS LONG!!!!
Do you detect pride and envy in his face?
Q3. Bonus question: what do they do with the penis when the bull is done with it? (When the bull dies)
They dry it and use it as a prodding stick for herding dogs. Again, who knew? 🤷🏻♀️
Aside from my questions, we got to see how they called in the bison. Even though they remain wild (versus domesticated like cows) they still have a relationship with these humans. When Erick and his wife rattled the cages, the bison came to see what was going on. They traveled in a herd. Everyone came.
One of the female bison was in mourning, because her baby was still borne. She slightly separated herself from the herd, and remained alone while we were there. Speaking of still borne, I vaguely remembered them telling us something about the bison cow’s body naturally absorb the still borne inside her. WOW right? Talk about conservation and wasting nothing.
Monsieur Bull! Isn’t he handsome?
OOh and we got to see Rick’s first attempt to process the skin of his dead cow. Aside from sending it to the processor to separate the meat from the bones, the owner wanted to do his first tanning of the skin and stripping down the head carcass.
It’s not an easy job. The tanning process is tedious and involves many steps. Next time you consider buying a fur item, think of all the people that were involved to turn that matted skin into a nice soft piece of fur.
To get to the skull of the cow’s head, Rick left the head in the river so the other animals could pick it clean, and allow the natural process of decaying to take place. It stank up to high heaven when he pulled it out of the river. But we got to see the skull, the jaw, and the horn caps (Which in the old days, they made drinking cups out of).
This is a different skull that was cleaned up long ago.
There were other fierce animals on this ranch too. Like this cute little kittens that was too young to adopt. Thank Goodness, or else we would have taken her home.
There you go... all that you ever wanted to know about bison. Satisfying eh?
We drove away with two pounds of bison bones, 2 ribeye steaks, and 2 packages of sausage. I could not be happier to be buying meat from an animal whose history I know.