CUSTER STATE PARK, S.D. (KELO) — Custer State Park staff say this year’s Buffalo Roundup was another success.

Thousands of people lined up this year at the annual Buffalo Roundup to watch these 1,400 bison run across the hills. This is the 57th anniversary of the event.

“It’s been going on for so many years, it kind of plays out every year the same way,” Gooder said.

Jason Gooder, the Resource Program Manager, says it was a very smooth year moving the bison to the corrals.

“So for our side with working the buffalo last week, everything was really well. We didn’t have any incidents with horseback riders, we didn’t have any incidents with the buffalo and all the buffalo made it to the corrals in a safe manner. After we got them all in, we worked about 40 head of bison,” Gooder said.

Lydia Austin with Visitor Services says crowd numbers were similar to the last couple of years sitting around 15 to 20,000 visitors.

“It’s the week after the roundup and we are kind of looking back on everything and on our end it looks like it went really well,” Austin said.

Some park staff will take about a month off to work the animals and prepare for auction. Then, starting sometime in November, they will already start planning for next year’s Buffalo Roundup.”

“We all sit down as a big team. Everyone who was involved from the permanent side, we call in folks that came in and helped us from across the state and say hey, what did you like, what did you not like, what worked, what didn’t work. And we really sit down and talk about it,” Austin said.

Starting next week, Custer State Park staff will begin to medical check the rest of the herd. Which will be about 1,350 bison.