I felt lucky to find this guy over at Hart park this morning.. I did allot of postwork on him to give it an ol western feeling today. Walt Disney gave this heard to Wm S HArt back in 1962 and this is a decendant of the heard. (William S Hart was a famous silant screen cowboy moviestar and his land/museam is not far from my house.._ Believe me this was a dream to capture usually you can NEVER get this close a real lucky day..!!.. They had put food out at the top of the hill so it went up to eat.. maybey I have just never been up in the morning early before to see it feeding and close. I was the only one up there this morning on the whole hill cept for the Park rangers..!! IT was so beautiful and peaceful!! (my first light rays shot!!) American Bison are sometimes confused with buffalo and live to be 40 years old!!.. was a staple of the North American Indians.. more info here; ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bison are hoofed mammals that have a large heavy head with short black horns and high humped shoulders that are covered in long black fur. The remainder of their body is covered with shorter brown fur. However, there are extremely rare occasions when a white buffalo will be born and keep that fur color for the remainder of its life. Normally, a single calf is born in May or June and are yellowish-red in color. Bulls, or males, will commonly stand six feet tall at their shoulders, they are ten to twelve and a half feet in length and exceed over one ton in weight. Cows are much smaller. There were a vast number of bison living in North America at the time of European discovery, there were an estimated 60 million living in the late 18th Century. With the advance westward of colonists, numbers dwindled and by 1820, there were none left east of the Mississippi River. The age of expansion westward brought the transcontinental railroad and the United States governments desire to hunt and eliminate the animal as a way of killing off the Native American population that stood in their way. All this resulted in there only being six hundred bison living in the United States by 1889. However, with the help of legislation for their protection, there are over 200,000 living today on private ranches, parks and reserves. The largest single herd is 3,600 that roam freely in Yellowstone National Park, but that number is threatened because of severe actions taken by the state government of Montana and a severe winter. Bison are in the bovid family and are not true buffaloes. They have fourteen pairs of ribs as opposed to the thirteen that are found in true buffalo. A young bison can mate as early as three years of age but will not become full grown for another five years. In some cases a bison may live to be thirty to forty years old. It has been discovered that any attempt to train a bison has failed because they have quick tempers and are such a massive size. Bison will congregate in small family groups that will form a large herd with other family groups. A close relative is the Wood Bison that has dwindled in numbers. It is larger with a longer neck and hair on its forehead, hairy horns, a darker coloring and a square hump. Plains bison also differ from Wood Bison in that they have "chops" or large clumps of hair on the back of their front legs. _______________________________________________ OK CHANGED this picture!!! I stuck a better more realistic Bison on it... The last one was just too smudged I hurried too quick eariler today in the end -cause of my daughters concert sorry I am always deleting and changing but I am an indecisive libra at times -LOL~!! and sometimes have a hard time deciding sometimes - put up my work and go ugh..yuck ..haha, usually after I have looked at it too long.. it gets to be blurry after a while.. OHHI should learn to just post pics and not play so much !!LOL!!! Thanks for all your time and comments! love ya all hugs and ♥ Kimmers!!