Want a home where the buffalo roam?

The USDA Forest Service managers of the national recreation area will sell about 32 of the shaggy beasts to the highest bidders in auction at the LBL’s South Bison Range corral at 9 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 11. Private ownership of bison doesn’t come without some doing and considerable responsibility, but it can be done.

Managers maintain herds of American bison at the South Bison Range in the LBL’s Tennessee sector and in the drive-through Elk & Bison Prairie near Golden Pond. Living in large, enclosed areas, those buffalo live life as buffalo do, and that results in natural reproduction. Annual births of bison calves means that the herds would outgrow their confined habitats if their numbers weren’t regularly reduced — in this case by sale of live animals.

The list of critters designated for sale includes a pregnant cow born in 2015, nine large bulls born in 2020, four pregnant cows born in 2020, six yearling heifers born in 2021, seven yearling bulls born in 2021, and four or five bull and heifer calves born last year.

The LBL has had resident bison since 1969, the initial animals coming to the South Bison Range from Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. Other buffalo bloodline additions have come with critters from Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge in Nebraska in 1988 and 2012, and from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota in 1996.

Apparently, these hulking herbivores from the Western Plains flourish just fine in these fenced habitats in Kentucky and Tennessee.

For buffalo bidders, preliminary details on all animals to be auctioned will be available after 2 p.m. Tuesday. A final list will be available at 8 a.m. on sale day when bidder registration and viewing of the available bison opens.

The animals will be tested for brucellosis and tuberculosis before the auction. Additional veterinarian services for bison sold will be available for purchase.

To meet requirements for interstate transport, a veterinarian will issue inspection certificates for animals sold. Import permits will be available for Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Alabama and North Carolina. Veterinary restrictions regarding bison are a bit sticky, so buyers should know their own state’s import regulations before bidding, managers say.

If you buy buffalo, you just can’t let them ride home with you in the back seat. Closed-topped trailers or trucks are required because of the animals’ ”size and temperament.”

LBL managers say a bison becomes the property and responsibility of a buyer once it steps off the loading chute into the buyer’s trailer. Bought bison should be loaded immediately after the auction, although arrangements can be made to load the critters from 8 to 10 a.m. on Feb. 13 for an additional fee of $30 per bison.

Upon acceptance of bid, a buyer can use cash, credit card or check to pay his or her, ahem, buffalo bill.

Questions on the bison auction should be directed to Curtis Fowler, phone 270-924-2061 or email frederick.fowler@usda.gov.

•••

Some of the staples of winter sporting pursuits are wrapping up for this aging 2022-23 hunting year.

Kentucky’s traditional duck season wound down to an icy closure with the end of shooting hours at sunset Tuesday. The 60-day season played out through conditions mild and frigid, dry and sodden Nov. 24-27 and Dec. 7-Jan. 31.

Western Kentucky wetlands had been holding fair to good numbers of migrant ducks. The most recent estimation of ducks, mostly mallards, congregated at the major waterfowl refuge of Ballard Wildlife Management Area was nearly 58,000 birds.

Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources managers noted that the region was beginning to see more transitional ducks, birds migrating back north from maximum southerly movement. However, harsh cold and mixed frozen precipitation at the close of the season may have stalled some of the reverse migration.

While duck season is over, goose hunting continues through Feb. 15. Kentucky’s goose season largely has become a sideline at best since the migration of interior Canada geese to the latitudes as far south as western Kentucky has long since ceased. Canada geese in the region nowadays are limited to non-migratory, resident birds. Canadas in the area in long-passed winter typically numbered in the tens of thousands, while nowadays, dozens are more like it.

Other options are snow geese and white-fronted geese. The estimations of these in the most recent Ballard survey were just under 8,000 and about 3,300 respectively.

A limited resurgence of waterfowl hunting, ducks included, is next weekend with Kentucky’s late youth-only waterfowl season Saturday, Feb. 11, and the late military-only waterfowl hunt on Sunday, Feb. 12.

The youth season is for adult-overseen kids younger than 16, while the military season is open to active members and honorably discharged veterans of U.S. armed forces. These qualified hunters can take ducks and geese under regular waterfowl season regulations.

Most small game hunting this time of year is directed at rabbits. Hunting for cottontails and swamp rabbits as well as quail in the western small game zone continues but concludes next week. Friday is the last day of rabbit and quail hunting in the western counties. That season ended Jan. 31 in the eastern rabbit/quail zone.

Steve Vantreese is a freelance outdoors writer. Email outdoors news items to outdoors@paducahsun.com or phone 270-575-8650.