TLOCDB

Animal · Legendary animal

Great Bison

Rare giant bison whose horn teaches and crafts the Iron Bison revolver; spawns less since Alpha 4.

At a glance

Rare spawn
About 0.19%
of bison herd spawns
Zone tier
Tier 2 and up

Values can change between playtests. Numbers from Game data: Alpha 5 game data

Compare: Hunting chart

Drops

What Great Bison gives.

PageAlways givesSource
Animal Fat Drops3–6Alpha 5 Game data: Alpha 5 game data
Bone Drops8–10Alpha 5 Game data: Alpha 5 game data
Great Bison Horn Drops2Alpha 5 Game data: Alpha 5 game data
Sinew Drops8–10Alpha 5 Game data: Alpha 5 game data
Great Bison Pelt Drops–March alpha Video: Jeff Kaplan + Esfand Play The Legend of California Alpha at 1:53:42 (opens in a new tab)

Amounts are the guaranteed drops before skill bonuses. Other drops depend on your knife and skills.

Facts

Each fact links to where it comes from.

Numbers already shown in the tables above aren’t repeated here.

Spot something wrong or out of date?

Patch history

4 versions

Every fact about Great Bison by game version, newest first.

VersionWhat we know
Dev build
  • A bug made legendary animals despawn when killing a player; it was fixed.
  • Strong legendary animal; players can lure a strong enemy camp onto it.
  • Special spawn animal; killing it yields horns for the Iron Bison.
  • Rare bison that exists in the game as a rare hunt.
  • A special spawn animal; killing it gives horns used to make the Iron Bison.
Alpha 5
  • Skinning the Great Bison always gives 8 to 10 Bone, 8 to 10 Sinew, 3 to 6 Animal Fat, 2 Great Bison Horn and 1 Bison Pelt High Quality, plus other drops that depend on the knife and skills.
  • Rare spawn: about 0.19% of bison herd spawns, in tier 2 zones and higher.
  • Doesn't spawn in forest, arid, wetland, salt water or mountain areas.
Alpha 4
  • A rare animal; its spawn chance was lowered in Alpha 4.
March alpha
  • Much bigger than a normal bison, with larger horns and brownish-golden fur.
  • Drops a horn when killed; the horn teaches the Iron Bison recipe.
  • Also yields a legendary pelt when skinned.
  • Skinned with a Tier 2 skinning knife.
  • Seen spawning twice in a row in one session; enemies and animals will fight it.
  • Spawn counts per server are tracked with telemetry to compare servers with different seeds.
  • Respawned during the March playtest and was killed more than once.
  • Aggroes players from a long distance and fights nearby enemies. Unconfirmed
  • Much larger than a horse.
  • The Great Bison fights human enemies such as Desperados.
  • Much larger than a player's horse.

Sources

10

Official posts, videos and game data this page is built from.

SourceDateUsed
Alpha 5 game data Game dataNov 12, 20267
Alpha 4 Patch Notes (opens in a new tab) Steam postSep 16, 20262
The Legend of California Dev Livestream (July) (opens in a new tab) VideoJul 18, 20261
The Legend of California Dev Livestream (June) (opens in a new tab) VideoJun 6, 20261
A Sneak Peek At The Iron Bison. (opens in a new tab) VideoMay 7, 20261
The Legend of California Dev Livestream (May) (opens in a new tab) VideoMay 2, 20262
Jeff Kaplan and Esfand sit back and let The Great Bison handle things (opens in a new tab) VideoApr 2, 20262
The Legend of California Alpha 2 - Playtest Highlights (opens in a new tab) VideoMar 31, 20263
Jeff Kaplan + Esfand Play The Legend of California Alpha (opens in a new tab) VideoMar 30, 20269
EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK - The Legend of California: A Sprawling Western Adventure (noclip) (opens in a new tab) VideoMar 28, 20261

Report an error

About

What kind of report?
Screenshots Up to 3, 10 MB each

    A screenshot from the game counts as a source. Only we see it; screenshots are never posted on the site.

    Ask the wiki

    Answers come only from the facts on this site, with links to check them.

    Try one of these:

    AI answers can be wrong: check the linked pages. Questions are sent to Anthropic’s Claude to answer and saved here without your name or IP so we can improve the wiki.