Custer State Park — ever heard of it? Something tells me that the average commoner hasn’t, but if you like loads of wildlife with, say, .01% of the crowd of Yellowstone, then add it to your bucket list!

Nestled in the southwest corner of South Dakota, Custer State Park has plenty to offer from both a landscape and wildlife perspective. With Mount Rushmore just to its north, Wind Cave National Park abutting its south side and Badlands National Park about an hour east, there’s plenty to do to keep you occupied for a week or more.

My first trip this past October was eventful, to say the least. I didn’t really realize it beforehand, but I kind of went “out of season” — just a few weeks past a lot of seasonal closures in the town of Custer, in Mount Rushmore’s tourist trap of Keystone and many Custer SP facilities, too. That didn’t bother me one bit, though, as I more or less had 71,000 acres to myself.

This was easy to infer on my first morning, as I drove the 18-mile wildlife loop road at sunrise and saw maybe…three other cars? Having been in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley a month prior and not being able to find parking in any roadside pull-offs due to the hordes of wildlife watchers, this was a welcome change.

Bison, pronghorn and prairie dogs are aplenty. This makes sense as the loop road features a large stretch of plains on the east side of the park.

It was also on this stretch that I witnessed one of my coolest wildlife encounters to date. On another sunrise drive, we pulled up to a prairie dog town. The park’s famed “begging burros” (donkeys that come up to your car for food handouts, which you are allowed to give them) were milling about at the back of the field.

We quickly realized that in between us and the feral asses was a coyote, on the hunt for a morning hot (prairie) dog snack. But wait, that’s not all — he had an unlikely friend!

*Fast friends. Can’t we all just get along?*

A badger! The two predators were working together, hunting as a team. I’ve seen clips of this phenomenon before from Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. Seems a bit strange, but now I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.

Little did I know there was a third predator among us and this one did not want to form a Big Three with the coyote and badger.

A bobcat! My first ever bobcat, to be precise.

The badger had disappeared into some brush to the left of the field, and while scanning for it, I spotted a pair of cat ears poking out from behind a prairie dog mound.

It was a thrilling…five seconds…before I decided to change my near-dead camera battery so that I could fully capture the events with peace of mind. Welp, that backfired, as it slunk away into a brush and tree filled draw that bisected two fields.

They say bobcats are sneaky, and now I know why, as I looked from all angles and waited quite a while for the feline to reappear, to no avail.

Oh well — what an hour that was! Three predators on the hunt, viewable from a roadside pull-out, with only three spectators the entire time — me and my parents. I will re-stress that something like this would draw an immense crowd at one of the more popular parks. Late October in Custer, though? That’s a different story.

There were many bald eagles also in the area, which had picked up the scent of a carcass of some sort a bit up the road.

*Wait, I thought we were gonna hang out?*

Nothing like a morsel of rotting flesh for breakfast.

The north side of the park, outside of the loop road, is a totally different beast. Dusty plains? You’d hardly imagine any are within a hundred miles if you hadn’t seen them yourself because things aren’t the same up here.

*Morning hike which featured my lifer Townsend’s Solitaire*

The Needles Highway, which heads to Sylvan Lake of National Treasure 2 fame, takes you through a rugged Black Hills wonderland of dense pines and rocky peaks. It also takes you through two harrowing rock tunnels that are, no exaggeration, big enough for your car by about six inches on each side. This is particularly scary when you are driving a new car you’ve had for less than a week.

*Two Greatest of all Times scale the rocky ledges*

Bighorn sheep, mountain goats and mule deer are more prominently featured once you leave the loop road’s north side. Lovers of even-toed ungulates, rejoice!

The sheep were actually mostly hanging out by the loop road’s north entrance near the campgrounds. Odd little animals, the sheep…

This is also where the visitor center is located, which features an IMAX-level theatre with a short movie about the park, as well as some lovely exhibits and taxidermied specimens, including a couple of mountain lions — the next animal on my bucket list (let’s just hope it doesn’t end my bucket list when I see one…)

Overall, my trip to Custer State Park was a great one — quiet, relaxing, beautiful and filled with wildlife of all sorts. What else can you ask for?

Score: 10/10

Wildlife Photography Trip Review: Custer State Park

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