A bull bison seriously injured an unidentified man at Bridge Bay Campground in Yellowstone National Park on Friday evening, hooking him with its left horn and launching him into the air in an attack captured on video by professional photographer Mike MacLeod. The victim and his grandson appear to have followed park rules throughout the encounter. That is the tension: the standard post-incident narrative, the one about tourists ignoring warnings, does not apply here.
What the video shows
MacLeod, already filming when the attack occurred, said the bull had charged a group of children taking photos from a safe distance shortly before the man and his grandson came around a corner unaware of what had just happened. The pair stopped to photograph the animal while it appeared to rest. When the bison began to stand, the grandfather recognized the cue and moved both of them behind a cluster of trees. A white pickup truck then drove past; MacLeod said the bull charged the truck, and when the truck kept moving, turned its attention to the two hiding in the trees.
The bison forced its way into the trees. The man tried to keep trunks between himself and the animal, and the bull briefly took its aggression out on a small sapling before locating the man again. MacLeod said the bison, which he estimated at least six feet tall, hooked the victim on his hip and tossed him several feet above its own height. The man landed on his side. The bison then stood over him, shaking its head.
MacLeod stopped recording and ran at the animal, yelling to draw it away. Other bystanders followed. Yellowstone EMS took over once the bison cleared the area. The grandson later told MacLeod that his grandfather has significant injuries and is not out of the woods yet. The National Park Service had not released an official statement or updated the man's condition as of Sunday morning.
The park context
This was Yellowstone's second reported human-bison incident of 2026. A 12-year-old visitor was injured June 26 near Mud Volcano, north of Fishing Bridge; the park did not disclose the extent of that child's injuries. The Friday attack came as bison approach the annual rut, a mating season that typically begins around late July, when bulls become markedly less tolerant of perceived threats. Before targeting the two visitors, the animal had charged a group of children and then a truck. MacLeod, who has spent considerable time around bison, said he had never seen behavior quite so indiscriminate.
The counterargument
The case for existing park rules holds that the 25-yard minimum distance requirement exists precisely because proximity elevates risk. The man was initially approached from roughly 100 yards, well outside that boundary. One reading is that the rules worked: had the man been closer at the outset, the outcome may have been worse. The regulations say nothing about what visitors should do when a 2,000-pound animal in rut decides to close that distance itself.
On balance, the Bridge Bay attack does not resolve cleanly into a failure of visitor behavior or a failure of park safety design. MacLeod said bystanders were warning each other and keeping their distance throughout. The man followed the rules. The line to watch is what the National Park Service says in its official statement, which as of Sunday had not arrived.