Bison hooks, tosses tourist 8 feet in air at Yellowstone National Park

3 min readUpdated: Jul 13, 2026 02:26 PM IST

A bull bison hooked a tourist and hurled him 8ft into the air at a campsite in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park. (Credit: NPS)

A bull bison hooked a tourist and hurled him 8ft into the air at a campsite in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park on Friday.

The encounter was captured by a professional photographer present at the site.

The tourist, who was walking with his grandson through the Bridge Bay Campground in the south of Fishing Bridge, is reportedly seriously injured.

The National Park Service (NPS), which administers Yellowstone, has yet to release details of the attack; however, an eyewitness, photographer Macleod, has provided a video of the attack to the Wyoming’s Cowboy State Daily newspaper, which has published it on YouTube.

“It’s changed my idea of what to expect from these guys at this time of year, because I would not have predicted that happening,” Macleod told the Newspaper.

Describing the event to the Cowboy State Daily, MacLeod said that the bison kept running through the campground while campers yelled and screamed to warn each other.

In MacLeod’s video, the grandfather and grandson each appear to pull cellphone cameras out and point them at the bison – while they are evidently dozens of yards away – before it all started.

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The animal was distracted by a pickup truck and chased it as the man and his grandson hid in the trees.

However, the bison later turned its attention to the duo. While the grandson was able to flee, the animal attacked the man, flipping him, he said.

Yellowstone officials carry a warning that the animals in the park ‘are wild and dangerous’ on its website.

“If an animal moves closer to you, back away to maintain a safe distance,” the park’s website says. “It’s illegal to willfully remain near or approach wildlife, including birds, within any distance that disturbs or displaces the animal.”

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The injured man, however, was following the park suggestions, said the photographer, who added, ‘they were respectful’.

Notably, the accident happened during bison mating season, when the male bison seek to show off their physical strength and stamina in a contest to woo a bison cow.

It is Yellowstone’s second bison-on-human incident in 2026, reported Cowboy State Daily.

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