Alright, back to the questions... @Zereth or anyone who might know:
I have (had) got the static bison working the way I wanted it to. I got it raised and it no longer collides with the pasture, even though it doesn't move and you can't tell if it's being worked or not.
Then I went and did a Walrus, for an alternative ivory resource (for those inuits up there). I replaced it flawlessly, deleted material, reweightpainted, etc. It was guaranteed flawless. I even moved it around everywhere, and it still wouldn't show up in-game.
But at one point earlier on I had noticed 2 barely noticeable tusks hovering in middair. It turns out they weren't attached to the walrus, were not weight painted and may have even had their own material.
So I tried just replacing the bison with a walrus, and not touching anything else... and it works perfectly.
Then for the weird part... after all this I go back and move one of the bison a bit to the right, export... and in-game it doesn't show up! It's like something happened that permanently messed up the export or something.
So I can probably get my static resources but... this breaks all the rules I've been taught in this thread! It's really acting weird
Kevin