The Story
Wind is tearing loose snow across a flat in the Tetons, and out in it, dark smudges at first, a band of five or six American bison is walking toward the road.
They start about 200 yards off, far enough that the gusts keep swallowing them whole and the lens cannot hold focus. The wind runs near 30 miles an hour. The snow on the flat is a few feet deep, and earlier on the same drive a coyote hunting grouse out here could barely move. The bison plod on, in no hurry.
With about an hour of daylight left, the gap closes. One animal comes on head-first until it fills the frame: horns hooked out and up, a dark muzzle, the whole face crusted white.
The snow maps the coat. Bison carry thick, long, dark hair on the head and front of the body and shorter hair on the rear, and that shaggy forequarter is where the white piles deepest. Under it lie thick skin and underfur, long guard hairs and layers of fat, the insulation that gets a bison through winter.
SaveThe timing fits the animal. Bison are mainly active by day, especially early morning and late afternoon, grazing between spells of loafing and chewing cud, and this band is on the move as the afternoon runs out.
Five or six is a small band. In Yellowstone, winter groups average about 20 bison. The season still takes its cut there: on average 9 of every 100 adult Yellowstone bison die over the winter, and 20 to 40 of every 100 first-year animals may die.
By dusk it is 12 degrees and the wind has not let up. One of the bison lies down in the snow. At an open car window, the photographer's hands are freezing, and he is ready to call it a night too.
