\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen 2026 started, I decided I’d revisit some places I hadn’t been to in a few years.That led to an up-close experience with bison at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge on Sunday.For those who don’t know, there’s a free 5-mile drive to check out the animals in the 800-acre area near Prairie City. I wasn’t sure my friend, Kathleen, and I would see any bison, elk or other wildlife.But we did. We really did.At one point, 12-15 bison surrounded my car, licking the wheel wells in particular. I slowly pulled forward at one point, and one bison butted my car in response. We stayed put a while longer.Several other cars got the same attention.Please note: We did NOT get out of the vehicle per instructions listed on signs. We also did not feed the animals or honk the horn. Our bison adventure ended with a visit to the car wash to get rid of all the bison spit.From the archivesFrom 1996: Iowans get first glimpse of bison at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tPRAIRIE CITY, Iowa \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
When 2026 started, I decided I’d revisit some places I hadn’t been to in a few years.<\/p>\n
That led to an up-close experience with bison at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge on Sunday.<\/p>\n
For those who don’t know, there’s a free 5-mile drive to check out the animals in the 800-acre area near Prairie City. I wasn’t sure my friend, Kathleen, and I would see any bison, elk or other wildlife.<\/p>\n
But we did. We really did.<\/p>\n
At one point, 12-15 bison surrounded my car, licking the wheel wells in particular. I slowly pulled forward at one point, and one bison butted my car in response. We stayed put a while longer.<\/p>\n
Several other cars got the same attention.<\/p>\n
Please note: We did NOT get out of the vehicle per instructions listed on signs. We also did not feed the animals or honk the horn. <\/p>\n
Our bison adventure ended with a visit to the car wash to get rid of all the bison spit.<\/p>\n
From the archives<\/p>\n
From 1996: Iowans get first glimpse of bison at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When 2026 started, I decided I’d revisit some places I hadn’t been to in a few years.That led…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[14144,14854,15627,6906,65211,13169,28414,84336,13014,209951,209956,209952,108859,209953,209955,209957,13544,209954,14848,79,19771,10129,20262,201],"class_list":["post-446779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal","tag-area","tag-bison","tag-car","tag-central-iowa","tag-elk","tag-first-glimpse","tag-instruction","tag-iowa","tag-iowa-wildlife","tag-iowan","tag-kathleen","tag-kcci","tag-neal-smith-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-neal-smith-refuge","tag-other-wildlife","tag-point","tag-prairie-city","tag-response","tag-science","tag-u-s-fish-and-wildlife-service","tag-vehicle","tag-while","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}