Wildlife photographers Rob and Jennifer Gunderson were celebrating their 20th anniversary on Tuesday with a visit to Yellowstone National Park where they captured an increasingly common incident of idiocy in Yellowstone.
“We were at the Pebble Creek picnic area, getting ready to enjoy our lunch,” Jennifer told Cowboy State Daily. “We looked over and saw a bison, and started watching people keep getting closer and closer.”
Jennifer said several women with small children were completely comfortable approaching the 2,000-pound herbivore. The Gundersons and other onlookers shouted at them, telling them to step back, but their warnings went unheeded.
Then, they saw the unthinkable: one of the children, a toddler, let go of her mother’s hand and ran toward the backside of the grazing bison. The child’s mother didn't seem perturbed in the slightest, taking her time to walk over to her progeny when they were already dangerously too close.
“Someone was on the phone calling the rangers,” Jennifer said. “It got to the point where other people there said, ‘I can’t watch this.’ If that bison turned around? We know how fast they can run.”
Thankfully, the bison was unbothered by the infringement on its personal space. Jennifer posted the video of the shocking display of personal and parental negligence on her Instagram page.
“I never thought we would ever witness something like that,” she said. “Never in a million years. We've always joked about ‘the tourons of Yellowstone,’ but didn’t think people could really be that ignorant. But we saw it firsthand.”
A Goring Start
While seemingly placid most of the time, bison are aggressive, multi-ton wild animals that are decidedly not child-friendly. Approaching a bison is one of the most dangerous decisions anyone can make in Yellowstone, as 2025 has already shown.
On May 4, a 47-year-old Florida man was gored by a bison in Lake Village. It was the first human-bison incident of 2025 in Yellowstone.
According to the book “Death in Yellowstone” by Lee H. Whittlesey, there have only been two confirmed deaths by bison in Yellowstone. Injuries, however, are much more common.
The Florida man who survived the May 4 incident was lucky to escape with minor injuries. Bison can easily cause much more serious injuries without trying.
“We see about two or three (bison attack victims) a year,” Dr. Kirk Bollinger with the Emergency Medicine department at Cody Regional Health told Cowboy State Daily in May. “I haven’t seen a lot of goring injuries where the victim’s guts are coming out. The big thing is the internal bleeding.”
That internal bleeding is caused by the blunt force and stomping that often results from a bison encounter. Their horns can cause tremendous damage, but bison primarily rely on their bulk for defense and attack.
Any incident traumatic enough to cause minor injuries in an adult could be fatal for a child. Bison aren’t discerning when they feel threatened and holding a child's hand when it’s within touching distance isn't going to provide any protection.
In July 2019, an agitated Yellowstone bison violently tossed a 9-year-old girl several feet into the air after she got within ten feet of it. The National Park Service said the girl was injured but survived.
The Gundersons and other onlookers shouted several warnings to the group that was well within the 25-yard distance that’s supposed to be kept between people and bison. Nevertheless, they kept pushing the limits of their safety.
Rob Gunderson described the temperament of the women and children as “nonchalant, carefree, and ignorant.”
“They didn’t respond to any of our warnings,” he said. “We told them to move and stay away. What else could you want us to do? We were shocked.”
Too Much To Survive
Studies have shown that the threshold of traumatic injury from a fall is roughly three times a person’s height. That would put the threshold for a 6-foot-tall adult at 18 feet, while the threshold for a 3-foot-tall toddler is around nine feet.
Bison have been known to toss adults up to 12 feet into the air. A much lighter child could potentially be tossed much higher and further, increasing the likelihood of a serious or fatal injury from the fall.
Assuming a child survived the blunt force trauma from the initial charge, they’d likely be dealing with broken bones, ruptured and lacerated organs, and internal bleeding in an area where the nearest trauma surgeon is at least an hour away.
Bison are often underestimated. The mother and her toddler probably didn’t realize how lucky they were to avoid serious injury after making such a reckless decision.
“It is your responsibility to stay more than 25 yards (23 meters) away from all large animals — bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose, and coyotes,” the Park Service said in a statement about the May 4 goring. “Bison will defend their space when threatened and have injured more people in Yellowstone than any other animal.”
It's Their Stupidity
As of Friday, Jennifer Gunderson’s video of the flippant families has been viewed over 400,000 times. She said she wanted to share the video because she was (and still is) incredulous that anyone would be that careless with their safety, let alone their children’s safety.
“I started recording just in case these people tried to sue the National Park Service,” she said. “Our intention wasn’t to go, ‘Oh, let’s watch this.’ We were surprised that this sort of thing actually happens in real life, and we wanted video evidence.”
Jennifer last visited Yellowstone during a family vacation in 1976. She couldn’t believe the ignorance on display.
“We were totally shocked that these people would get that close,” she said. “We shouted warnings. They just ignored us and kept going.”
Since sharing her video, Jennifer has received some criticism, mainly from people asking why she and Rob “didn’t do anything” to stop the reckless behavior. Her response was blunt and straightforward.
“We're not responsible for somebody else's safety,” she said. “We're responsible for our own. They never responded to any of our warnings. There are warnings everywhere. I hate to say it, but at that point, it’s their stupidity.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
