Bison that appear to be grazing peacefully are able to accelerate into a terrifying pace, making them among the most dangerous animals in Yellowstone, where one of the giant bovines recently charged at and tossed a grandfather.
Carl McDaniel, 65, suffered multiple bone fractures in the July 10 attack at the national park but lived to tell the tale, as seen in a video he recorded a few days later from his bed at Bozeman Health Deaconess Medical Center in southern Montana.
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“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 posted on Instagram on Saturday.
McDaniel was on a after-dinner stroll with his grandson when the attack happened at Bridge Bay Campground, not far from Yellowstone Lake.
“They move faster than you could ever imagine. He just kept coming,” he said. The bison did not connect with McDaniel’s grandson, who was not hurt.
Bison can run up to 35 mph (56 kph), faster than the men’s world record in the 100-meter dash. They stand up to 6 feet (2 meters) tall, weigh up to 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms), and are North America’s biggest land animal.
Yellowstone records on average a couple of bison attacks every year. At least two people were attacked in the park in 2025.
Bozeman Health emergency department Dr. Eric Lowe said in the video that McDaniel suffered fractures in multiple places. McDaniel said the hardest part wasn’t the creature’s horns.
“I didn’t get bruises from him launching me in air,” he said. “It was the landing that became the problem.”
