MOIESE, Mont. — When it comes to the four seasons at the National Bison Range, different people have different favorites, Pat Jamieson says.
Some prefer summer, even though it can get hot, dry and doggoned brown around here. The reason?
“It’s bison mating season, and that can get pretty exciting,” says Jamieson, the outdoor recreation planner at the national wildlife refuge.
“Some people like fall, when the elk have their antlers and are bugling,” she goes on. “There are even people who like to come in winter, because it’s so quiet, and you can pretty much have the place to yourself.”
But most people are probably like Jamieson.
At the Bison Range, there’s no time like the present, she says – spring, when the wildlife is giving birth among the range’s blooming wildflowers.
Bears come first, and out of sight, bearing their cubs in February, while they’re still tucked away in dens and hibernating.
Bison are next, starting in mid- to late April and continuing into June.
They are, appropriately, the most visible of the newborns.
Unlike the pronghorns giving birth now — and the deer and elk that will start next month — the mothers of the rust-colored calves aren’t too concerned about predators trying to make dinner out of their newborns. There’s no attempt to hide the calves.
“Nothing in nature,” Jamieson says, “is stupid enough to bother an 800-pound mother.”
Well, nothing except, of course, people.
Jamieson is always happy for the opportunity to remind visitors not to leave their vehicles when they’re near bison, and point out the danger is even greater when calves are present.
“They don’t have the capacity to understand you won’t hurt them,” Jamieson says. “Cars? They know cars don’t eat bison, and they’re used to them here. But if you get out and now they’re looking at a person instead of a car – well, a bison’s defense is not to run away. It’s to smush you.”
A tad more intricate is the defensive battle plan of a new pronghorn momma.
There’s a pretty steep mortality rate for pronghorn fawns, and a fascinating cat-and-mouse game that goes on between the mothers and the coyotes that like to cart off the babies in order to feed their own pups.
To start with, pronghorns usually give birth to twins, doubling their chances that at least one of their offspring will survive.
“They hide them very well in the grass,” Jamieson says. “Coyotes will watch for the pronghorn females to come to feed their babies so they can figure out where the fawns are hidden. The pronghorns know to go in a different direction from their fawns for food.”
Two years ago, Jamieson saw an amazing sight. A coyote had her jaws clamped around a pronghorn fawn and was hauling it off.
“All of a sudden,” she says, “a golden eagle flew overhead. It just crumpled and dove straight at the coyote. The coyote ducked, dropped the fawn and ran in one motion, and the golden eagle got the fawn.”
Pronghorns at the Bison Range eventually figure out one thing about the coyotes that live here, too.
“Older females learn over time that coyotes don’t like people, and they don’t like cars,” Jamieson says. “They learn that people in cars won’t bother them, but coyotes will. They learn to have their babies by the road, and bed them by the road.”
It’s not the case for the pronghorns that roam eastern Montana, where there’s plenty of room for them to spread out and hide their babies.
But for Bison Range visitors, it means a better chance of spying a pronghorn fawn as they make the 19-mile loop around Red Sleep Mountain Drive.
The first two weeks are the most critical for a pronghorn fawn’s survival.
“It is the fastest land animal in North America,” Jamieson says of the species, which can go from 0 to 60 mph in a flash as an adult, and keep the speed up for long distances.
“Once they’re 2 weeks old, they can outrace almost anything,” she goes on. “Unless they’re injured, no predator can catch them in the right habitat. It usually takes deep snow bogging them down, or obstacles such as fences, for any predator to have a chance at them.”
It can also help the fawn survival rate if it’s a big year for mice.
“It takes time for a coyote to watch pronghorn females, study their body language,” Jamieson says. “They don’t want to waste their time and get nothing, and mice are easier to catch, so if it’s a good mouse year, they’ll kill more of those.”
Other species giving birth at the Bison Range right now include bighorn sheep. Their protection of their young is pretty simple, and the opposite of the pronghorns’ roadside strategy.
Ewes lamb in the rugged terrain only they can access.
The new life on the range is only one reason it’s Jamieson’s favorite time of year here.
Birds are back, too, and many of the wildflowers are in bloom, including larkspur, shooting stars, prairie smoke, the sunflower-colored arrowleaf balsamroot and the whimsically named mouse-on-a-stick.
The flowers can be a bonus to a National Bison Range visit, and they can save a trip, too.
“I love spring here,” Jamieson says, “and I like the flowers, because they don’t run away.”
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com. News editor Justin Grigg can be reached at (406) 523-5243 or at jgrigg@missoulian.com.
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