They may look calm while grazing, but bison can explode into a frightening charge with little warning — and that’s exactly what happened to one grandfather during a summer evening stroll at Yellowstone National Park.
Carl McDaniel, 65, found himself airborne on July 10 after a bison at Bridge Bay Campground, located near Yellowstone Lake, suddenly targeted and charged him. McDaniel sustained fractures in multiple areas of his body but survived, later sharing his story in a video recorded from his hospital bed at Bozeman Health Deaconess Medical Center in southern Montana.
“He wasn’t showing aggression or anything like that until it picked a target. That target happened to be me,” McDaniel said in the video, which was posted to Instagram on Saturday.
McDaniel had been taking a post-dinner walk with his grandson when the animal made its move. Fortunately, the bison did not strike the boy, who escaped without injury.
“They move faster than you could ever imagine. He just kept coming,” McDaniel recalled. Bison are capable of reaching speeds up to 35 mph — faster than the world record in the men’s 100-meter dash. These massive animals can stand as tall as 6 feet, tip the scales at up to 2,000 pounds, and hold the title of North America’s largest land animal.
Emergency department physician Dr. Eric Lowe at Bozeman Health confirmed in the video that McDaniel suffered fractures in several locations. But when McDaniel reflected on the most painful part of the ordeal, it wasn’t the animal’s horns that caused the most damage.
“I didn’t get bruises from him launching me in the air,” he said. “It was the landing that became the problem.”
Bison attacks at Yellowstone are not uncommon. The park records an average of a few attacks each year, and at least two people have already been attacked there in 2025.
