This bison went from being on the menu to sitting down at the table to eat real quick.
Bison might seem like an easy target to predators out in the wild, but hunting down one of the big 2,000 pound beasts isn’t always a cake walk. If you were run into a bison like this one in the video, you’d quickly find out that they’re capable of fighting back and defending themselves.
While we humans look at bison as the largest land mammals in the Northern Hemisphere, predatory animals usually look at them as the biggest feast in the Animal Kingdom. I think I’m giving humans too much credit there…we don’t have a great track record of being smart around bison.
In fact, human beings often end up looking like the wolves in this footage, getting thrown effortlessly up into the air with one swoop of the bison’s antlered head. Being gored by a bison doesn’t look all that fun, as you’ll be able to tell by the shape that it leaves these wolves in.
In the clip, two wolves, both alphas of the pack, think that they are going to get an easy meal in as they team up to take down the big ole bison. Sidenote: Wolfpack’s don’t really have an alpha male and female in the commonly understood sense that it’s the biggest and baddest leaders. More so, they tend to be the oldest members of the family.
With this young bison being on its own, the canines assumed that it would be simple to overwhelm, just going by the “strength in numbers” strategy.
However, the bison ended up making them question everything as it went into a full-on rampage in defense of itself. Some might even watch the footage and say that it was an act of self-offense as much as it was self-defense. That bison was angry and getting after it.
The commentary on the video suggests that the wolves were starving, and that’s why they got desperate and narrowed in on the bison. Unfortunately for them, the bison was hungry as well… for blood, and rag-dolled those wolves up and down, goring and tossing them into the air.
The blood-covered battle went on for over two hours, and though the bison had the strength advantage over the two wolves, the canines were able to endure in the frigid face-off longer, and eventually outlasted the bison and brought it down.
It was a valiant effort by the bison before it went down, a well-earned meal for the wolf.