Bison - Sounds Wild
Bison Foray

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Bison Foray

A giant brown wood bison stands in a vast green meadow near Galena in Interior Alaska. He's almost as big as an SUV, a hulking bull approaching the prime of his life. He's called bull 161, sometimes known as the Galena Bull because he hung around Galena in 2017.

Bull 161 is a traveler. He was born at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in 2011, and in 2015, when he was four years old he was one of 130 wood bison released to the wild near Shageluk, on the Innoko River. He stayed there near the main wood bison herd for the first year, and in early summer of 2016 he moved about 50 miles south to the Holy Cross area on the lower Yukon. In January 2017 he was near Galena, 180 miles north!

Young adult bull bison often go on forays. If they find a location with good habitat, they may spend a year gaining weight, and return to the herd as a larger, stronger, more successful competitor during the breeding season. Bull forays are also a way that bison herds expand their range. Once a bull returns from a foray he may collect a group of cows and bring them back to the newly discovered habitats.

One large bull has done that. He spent almost a year alone near the mouth of the Iditarod River, then in fall of 2016 he returned to the core bison area near Shageluk, joined a group of 10 animals, and in 2017, they followed him back to the Iditarod. After almost a year, that group has grown to 24 bison, including 5 new calves.