When Carl McDaniel was tossed by a bison in the Bridge Bay Campground in Yellowstone National Park, several people rushed and yelled at the angry animal to prevent it from attacking the 65-year-old grandpa again.
Their efforts were successful, sending the bison running. As far as the world could see, that was the end of the incident.
It wasn’t.
Joshua Lewis of Colorado Springs encountered the belligerent bull bison at the same campground moments after it tossed McDaniel and ran off. He said that the incident was “only the beginning of the bison’s rage.”
“I noticed how fast everybody jumped on and started retelling the story and what happened afterward, but there was a lot more that happened after the fact,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Nobody’s aware of what happened after Round One.”
‘Look Out!'
On the evening of July 10, Lewis was camping in spot E-243 on the E-Loop at Bridge Bay Campground. He was there with his cousin and her son from Switzerland.
When Lewis heard a commotion coming from the D-Loop, he assumed it was “a bunch of guys getting or about to get drunk.”
“We heard the yelling and thought it was drunks having a brawl,” he said. “No one yelled ‘bison’ that we heard, just adults yelling ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ and ‘Stop.’ Not even a scream of terror.”
What Lewis was actually hearing was photographer Mike MacLeod and others charging and yelling at the bull bison that had just tossed Mike’s grandfather Carl into the air.
They had rushed the bison to prevent it from harming the older man any further.
They successfully chased the bison off. It ran from the D-Loop to the E-Loop — and it wasn’t any less agitated, Lewis said.
Lewis was walking to the bathroom when he heard his cousin scream. Two men at the E-244 campsite were shouting, “Look out!”
“That’s the total time and distance before the problem descended into our loop,” Lewis said. “I turned expecting something to have gone wrong with the fire, but saw the men, my cousin, and her 12-year-old son all scattering.”
The bison was running head-on at first, so Lewis didn’t immediately register what was happening. When the bison turned, revealing its massive profile, he recognized the severity of the situation.
“It had come through the amphitheater area and a small meadow next to (our campsite) and was apparently already in full charge,” he said. "The men at 244 happened to be sitting at their fire, facing south, and saw it coming.
"My cousin heard the noise and turned at the same time the men started yelling when they saw it bearing down on the camp.”
Nobody was too close to the bison. It had closed the distance and was still amped up.
Picking It’s Next Target
Lewis knew that everyone in the vicinity was making stressful split-second decisions when the bison suddenly charged into their area. From what he observed, the bison appeared to be assessing the situation and choosing a target.
“The suddenness of the attack really threw everybody off their game,” he said. “In the snap of a finger, the bison had already blasted into the camp and was trying to figure out which way it was going to go and who was going to hit first.”
Lewis had to be very intentional with his heat-of-the-moment actions. He wasn’t as agile as he would’ve liked.
“I almost lost my leg last year because of a massive infection and a surgically related complication in my knee,” he said. “I was using a walker until January and only quit using a cane in March.”
Since he couldn’t run to save anybody, he figured the best thing he could do was save his cousin’s son.
“He was able to run through the trees east around Site 244 to the bathroom,” he said. “I shoved him into the women’s room and slammed the door shut.”
The 'Minute To Live' Look
Lewis said the bison had already seemed targeted and was pursuing the 12-year-old. The two men at Site 244 distracted it long enough for him to reach the bathroom.
Meanwhile, Lewis’s cousin was running around the campsite trying to keep parked vehicles and trees between her and the bison.
“I was able to get her attention and guide her towards me,” he said. “The guys at the campsite next to us kind of directed traffic and created chaos for the bison.”
Suddenly, his cousin tripped and fell, and Lewis knew he couldn’t get to her.
“My knee would not allow me to get away,” he said. “If I had gotten to her, I would have been a sitting duck and done nothing but slow it down, which probably would have gotten us both killed."
Since the bison was still focused on the boy who suddenly disappeared into the bathroom, it didn’t notice the tripped woman. It definitely noticed her when she got back up and started running, as it immediately turned to charge at her.
Lewis, who served in the military, said he saw a chilling look in his cousin’s eyes in that moment.
“I've had experiences in my life, like failed parachutes during a parachute military freefall exercise, where it's like, ‘I got one minute, and I'm done,’” he said. “I saw that look in her face, like she knew that was the end of the line.”
Fortunately, Lewis’s cousin managed to run to the bathroom before the bison reached her. Once she was inside and Lewis slammed the door shut, the bison was less than 20 feet away and rapidly closing the distance.
A Horror Movie Moment
With three people secure in “the woefully inadequate bunker with no secondary exits,” Lewis said he was “trying to calculate a bunch of problems and solutions all at once.”
“I didn't know if it could knock down a concrete wall, because if it could get into the bathroom, somebody was going to die,” he said.
After a few minutes of uncertainty, Lewis decided he needed to know what was happening outside. It felt like a horror movie moment.
“There was nothing but dead silence until I opened the door, and it squeaked really loud,” he said. “I didn't get hit and knocked on my butt, so I pushed it open a little more with a good, loud squeak.”
That’s when the two men from Site 244 called out to Lewis, telling him that the bison was gone. After everyone was safe inside the bathroom, it had run eastward and out of the camp.
The next thing Lewis heard was sirens rushing toward them.
It was Yellowstone EMS, “coming to check on the carnage” at the D-Loop and to treat McDaniel’s critical injuries.
The whole incident lasted a few minutes that felt like an eternity, Lewis said, adding that nobody in their part of the campground was hurt.
“I think the only reason there was not another strike and injury is that four people in motion, especially the men yelling at 244, made it hard for the bison to select a target,” he said.
Going And Gone
As everyone’s adrenaline started to come down, they were trying to process what had just happened.
Lewis spoke to the two men who successfully distracted the bison, and they were going over every detail in exasperation. They seemed to be experienced backcountry hikers, which added to their dismay in the moment.
“I could tell both of them were doing an after-action review,” he said. “One of them told me he always has bear spray on his hip, but he didn't know if he should have pulled it out or just run. His brain definitely locked up in the moment.”
According to Lewis, they were asking the same question as MacLeod and McDaniel in the aftermath of their encounters with the bison: “Did I do the right thing?”
Lewis’s cousin immediately started taking down their tent. They left the park and spent the night in Cody. It was another familiar, haunting look Lewis knew.
“She was clearly showing some signs of PTSD from the encounter,” he said. “She’s the primary caregiver for her son, and I think, as a mom, she definitely was in more of an emotional state realizing how close she was to losing everything.”
As for her son, he quickly recovered and didn’t seem to be overly affected by what happened.
“He’s a typical kid, (so he was) watching some World Cup recaps and his video games before they went back to Switzerland,” Lewis said.
Lewis’s cousin eventually asked to see MacLeod’s video of the bison tossing McDaniel.
“She got really quiet,” Lewis said. “I think she realized how much worse things were. It brought it into another level of perspective.”
She got another reminder of what happened at the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo when they returned to Colorado Springs. Lewis had already bought tickets for her and her son, and the last event of the night is always bull riding.
“The second bull out of the shoot was brown with black hair,” he said. “It almost looked like a tiny buffalo. The next rider got bucked and landed like a frog, and the bull’s front feet hit that guy square in the butt.
"She got choked up on that and said, ‘What would have happened to me if that bison had gotten hold of me?’”
Could Have Been Worse
Lewis’s account of what happened at the E-Loop of the Bridge Bay Campground was extremely detailed. That’s because he works as a private investigator and “writing reports and covering details” comes with the job.
What struck Lewis wasn’t only how terrifying and traumatizing that moment was, but how much worse it could have been.
“There were several things that could have been worse,” he said. “The family that had the campsite next to the bathroom, with several small children, was away at the time. Those young guys managed to yell and make the right noise at the right time, which gave my cousin and her son time to get to relative safety.”
He also noted that while the bison was extremely aggressive, it wasn’t destructive. There was little to no evidence of what happened at the campground in the aftermath.
“Between the tents, fire pits, and vehicles, the bison didn’t touch a thing or do any property damage,” he said. “It’s a testament to the deadly agility.”
Lewis was glad to hear that McDaniel was recovering from the bison toss. His femur was broken in four places, requiring surgery, but he’s expected to make a full recovery.
The bison, meanwhile, remains and will remain at large. Yellowstone officials confirmed that they don’t intend to take any management action against it.
“The bison will not be euthanized,” Yellowstone spokeswoman Linda Veress told Cowboy State Daily. “While serious injuries are uncommon and fatalities are extremely rare, encounters with bison can result in severe consequences.”
Lewis wanted to share his story because the encounter at Bridge Bay Campground didn’t end with the bison running off after tossing McDaniel. It’s a harrowing reminder of how dangerous Yellowstone’s wildlife can be.
“It was amazing how fast everything happened,” he said. “I’ve been in some hairy incidents, and I knew bison could run fast, but it astonished all of us.
"If it had not been distracted by four people and had only one person on its mind, there would have been a different outcome.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
