It’s summer and the the young buffalo are feeling itchy and out of sorts. Something’s coming up, they can feel it but don’t know what it is. All they know is they have to run around, and buck, and spin, and fall to their knees. Pushing their snouts in to the fresh dirt they’ve stirred up, and using their horns to tear up the ground is also on tap. If one of their herd mates is close by they might try and goad them into a sparring match but nothing too serious. The time for the real fighting is still a couple of months away. It’s the prelude to the Rut and these first timers are just at the mercy of their hormones.

The Rut is the breeding season for the buffalo and it is the largest event in their lives. The urge to breed is totally consuming and will occupy their time with fighting, chasing willing and unwilling cows, bellowing, kicking up dirt and dust and generally being swept up in the compulsive nature of their lives. This young buffalo used an old wallow as the center point of his frustration and danced and ran in circles around it and thru it and put on a spectacle that lasted until it was exhausted and finally collapsed to rest. To the observer it was dancing in the dust and for a large animal it was surprisingly graceful.