That buffalo were among the animals inhabiting the Yellowstone Park was known in the early days of its history; and that indefatigable explorer and former superintendent of the Park, Colonel P. W. Norris, soon recognized the need of protection for them if their extermination was to be prevented. The Park buffalo may all be classed under the head of mountain buffalo, and even in this elevated region they live for the greater part of the year in the timber. In many ways their habits are quite different from those generally attributed to the buffalo of the plain, and it is most unusual, save in midwinter, to find them in open valley or on the treeless mountain slope. They haunt the most inaccessible and out-of-the-way places, and what would seem to be the least attractive spots, living in open glades and pastures, the oases of the dense forest, often only to be reached by climbing over a tangle of fallen timber. Localities least visited by man and avoided by other animals are by preference selected by buffalo. During long wanderings over the timber plateau I have never ceased to be amazed at the resorts selected by them, and by the rapidity of their disappearance on being alarmed. I have frequently come upon ground tramped up by buffalo, showing every evidence of recent occupation, but the animals were gone. It is surprising how few buffalo have been seen in midsummer, even by those most familiar with their haunts and habits. They wander about in small bands in such unfrequented country as the southern end of the Madison plateau, the Mirror plateau, and the head of Pelican Creek, and on the borders of that elevated table-land known as Elephant Back. In winter, leaving the forest, they feed over the slopes of Specimen Ridge, and in the open Hayden Valley.
It is not likely that there ever were many buffalo in the Park, or that those there ever suffered seriously from the hand of man other than the Indian. Up to within recent years the plains buffalo offered a more attractive field for the hunter nearer home. Their abodes in the Park were inaccessible and far away from any base of supplies. Only since their extermination from the plains and the advance of settlements to the Park border have inroads upon their numbers taken place. If they ever roamed over this country in large herds, evidence of the fact should be apparent by well-trodden buffalo trails, which nowhere form a feature of the Park plateau. Whether the natural increase in their numbers has been kept down by the severity of the climate and an uncongenial environment, or whether the young calves have been attacked by predatory animals, has never been satisfactorily determined. Dangers which would scarcely befall them in an open country might in a timbered region tend to keep down their numbers. They occasionally wander beyond the Park borders into Idaho and Montana with the first fall of snow, returning to their mountain homes with the approach of spring. In 1884 I estimated the buffalo in the Park at 200; since that time they have gradually increased, and have probably doubled in number. In the winter of 1891-92 the grazing-ground in Hayden Valley was visited by a snowshoe party, who counted the scattered bands and took photographs of several groups. These groups were generally small, and each contained a goodly number of calves. They numbered by actual count nearly 300, but there is no means of knowing what proportion of the Park buffalo were then gathered here.