A Bull Bison, a Grandfather, and Eight Feet of Air at Bridge Bay

On the evening of Friday, July 10, 2026, a 65-year-old man walking with his grandson at Yellowstone's Bridge Bay Campground was hooked on the hip by a bull bison and launched roughly eight feet into the air, an impact captured on high-resolution video by a professional wildlife photographer standing nearby.

What Happened at Bridge Bay Campground

The attack unfolded at Bridge Bay Campground, a family drive-in site on the western shore of Yellowstone Lake, south of Fishing Bridge in Wyoming. According to the account reconstructed by Cowboy State Daily, the grandfather and his grandson were walking together and were initially at least 100 yards from the animal, four times the National Park Service required minimum distance of 25 yards from any bison inside the park.

A mature bull was sitting in a dust wallow with his head turned toward the campground road. A passing white pickup truck spooked the animal, and the bull rose. When he stood, he turned toward the walking pair. The man and his grandson ran and tried to duck into a stand of nearby trees for cover. The bison caught the older man from behind, hooked him with his left horn on the hip, and threw him. Witnesses said he rose several feet above the top of the bull's head before falling back to the ground. He came down on his side, and his hip and the leg he landed on absorbed the worst of the impact. The grandson was not physically injured. Family members at the scene told reporters the grandfather was "not out of the woods yet."

The National Park Service, as of the day after the incident, had not released an official statement or the victim's identity.

The Photographer Who Ran Toward the Bull

The footage that has traveled around the world was shot by Mike MacLeod, a professional wildlife photographer based in Bozeman, Montana, and later licensed to news outlets through the video service NewsFlare. MacLeod was already filming the bull because the animal was visibly agitated. He described the bison in plain language to Cowboy State Daily: "He was angry, agitated and charging anything and everything." To Yahoo News he was more clinical about his own intent: "I was just trying to get some dramatic footage of that bison having a fit."

His description of the impact itself matches the frame-by-frame content of the video. "The bison hooked him with his left horn on his hip and tossed him in the air," MacLeod said. "He made a perfect flip and landed on his side." Of the scale of the toss, he offered a measurement most viewers would not have caught in real time: "The bison was at least 6ft tall, and [the victim] was several feet above him." Even to a working wildlife photographer who had been watching the bull for minutes, the moment was startling. "I would not have predicted that happening," he said.

After the goring, MacLeod set the camera aside and ran toward the bull, shouting and trying to make himself appear as large and threatening as possible in an effort to draw the animal's attention off the injured man. The bull disengaged. The recording, and the runner, are the reason the world has a clean visual record of what a Yellowstone goring actually looks like.

The Animal, the Season, the Distance

The confrontation happened inside the annual bison rut, the breeding season that runs roughly from June through September and peaks in late July and August. During the rut, mature bulls become highly territorial, more reactive to disturbance, and are responsible for the majority of goring incidents inside the park. That biology is not incidental. It is the calendar in which every summer Yellowstone incident sits.

The numbers around a mature bull explain why the toss traveled eight feet vertically off a single horn hook. A bull bison is the largest land mammal in North America and can weigh up to 2,000 pounds. The animal in MacLeod's video was estimated at more than six feet tall at the shoulder. From a standstill, a bison can make a vertical leap of six feet. On flat ground, one can run 35 miles per hour, roughly three times faster than a human sprinter. The 25-yard rule the park prints on every entrance receipt, every trailhead sign, and every campground briefing exists because a bull can close that gap in under two seconds.

In this case, the family was not inside the 25-yard line. They were four times outside it. The pickup truck reshaped the geometry in an instant.

A 2026 Pattern, Inside a Longer Record

The July 10 incident was the second confirmed bison-human injury inside Yellowstone in 2026. The first came on June 26, when a 12-year-old visitor was gored by a bison near the Mud Volcano thermal area, north of Fishing Bridge. Two incidents in the first two weeks of the rut, at two different developed areas of the park, is consistent with what rangers have been documenting for years.

Bison have injured more visitors inside Yellowstone than any other animal, ahead of grizzly bears, wolves, and elk. The park has recorded at least eight bison gorings inside its boundaries since 2022, including two incidents in 2024, one in 2023, and two in 2025, in May and June. And yet the same record contains a striking counterweight: no visitor has been killed by a bison inside Yellowstone since 1983, a run of more than 43 years without a fatal attack. The animals hurt people. They rarely finish the job.

That gap between injury and death is not luck. It is a function of proximity. Most gorings are recoverable when the encounter begins outside the 25-yard line, when the victim is not cornered against a vehicle or a tent, and when someone on scene is willing to redirect the bull's attention, as MacLeod did. Reduce any of those variables and the arithmetic changes.

What the Video Actually Documents

There is nothing new, in a biological sense, about what happened at Bridge Bay on Friday. A startled bull rose from a wallow, a family ran for tree cover, a horn caught a hip, a body was thrown. Yellowstone has recorded this pattern in nearly every summer goring on the books. What is unusual here is the record itself: a professional photographer with a long lens was already tracking the animal, was close enough to see the horn make contact, and stayed on the frame through the moment of impact.

The video does not settle any argument about park policy, staffing, or the behavior of the truck driver whose vehicle spooked the bull. The driver has not been identified. Neither has the victim. The park has not spoken. The grandson is unhurt. The grandfather, as of the day after, was in serious condition with concentrated injuries to his hip and one leg. Mike MacLeod's short run at a two-thousand-pound rutting bull is the only piece of on-record intervention anyone has confirmed.

The rut runs through September. The 25-yard rule is printed on every sign inside the park for a reason that the video, in about four seconds, makes exceptionally clear.

Sources

• Cowboy State Daily
• NBC News
• Yahoo News
• Whiskey Riff
• Yellowstone National Park (NPS)
• Jackson Hole News&Guide