The bison involved in the recent incident at Yellowstone, where it launched a great-grandfather eight feet into the air, will not face euthanasia following the attack.
Park officials informed TMZ that there are no plans to take ‘management action’ against the bison, suggesting the animal will not be culled.
According to the park’s policy, Yellowstone typically refrains from interfering with natural events unless someone’s life is at risk or Congress orders intervention.
The Yellowstone website emphasizes this perspective, stating, ‘Yellowstone is not a zoo or an animal park; it is a wilderness area where countless creatures live in their own habitat on their own terms.’
The 65-year-old victim, Carl McDaniel from Washington State, was attacked by the frustrated bison while he and his grandson were walking near the Bridge Bay Compound in the park around 8:30 p.m. on Friday.
Video of the attack showed the bull becoming frustrated and charging at McDaniel, chasing him through the trees.
Once the animal caught up to the great-grandfather, it hooked him with one of its horns and aggressively flung him into the air.
McDaniel broke his femur – the strongest bone in the body – in four places near his hip in the assault, but was already able to stand on Monday after undergoing surgery the day before, he told CNN.
The bison that flung Carl McDaniel several feet in the air will not be euthanized, Yellowstone said
McDaniel, 65, was attacked by the agitated bison at Bridge Bay Compound in the national park as he and his grandson were walking by at around 8.30pm on Friday
‘I will be doing physical therapy for the next few days to get to walk, but it was not as catastrophic as it could have been,’ he said.
McDaniel noted that the six-foot-tall animal could have easily killed him.
‘When I was on the ground, immobile, unable to move, he was right on top of me,’ he recounted. ‘He could have stomped on me, he could have gored me, he could have done almost anything to take my life and he did not do so.’
It remains unclear what may have provoked the beast to attack the grandfather on Friday evening, but it came amid bison mating season when the males of the species have increased testosterone levels.
The animal had already been roaming the campground and charging at other campers – including a group of teenage boys who were able to run away from the area – in the moments before McDaniel and his grandson passed by.
It then took a break to rest in the dirt near a picnic table covered with dinner leftovers just off a campground road.
‘When he got up, it was kicking like a rodeo horse who’s clearly very agitated,’ Mike MacLeod, a Montana photographer who captured the ordeal, told The New York Times.
It was then that McDaniel drove up in a pickup truck with his grandson and began taking photos of the bison, apparently catching the beast’s attention.
The national park rarely intervenes with nature as ‘Yellowstone is not a zoo or an animal park; it is the wilderness home to countless creatures living in their own environment on their own terms,’ its website said
‘As soon as they stop taking pictures, the bison stands up and the grandfather’s like, “Let’s get out of here. I don’t like this,”‘ MacLeod added.
Thinking quickly, McDaniel said he then decided to lure the beast away from his grandson.
‘There was little time to decide what to do,’ he recounted to CNN. ‘At that point, he was within 100 yards; he could be to us in seconds, so I told my grandson to run in one direction and I went the other to try and draw him away.’
McDaniel’s grandson was then able to flee and lose the beast, but the Washington state grandfather was not as lucky.
Even after effectively flipping McDaniel into the air, the bison still ‘didn’t leave,’ according to MacLeod.
‘He stood right over Carl, and he was really, really angry,’ MacLeod said. ‘His head’s pumping up and down and he displayed all that aggressive behavior.’
At that point, MacLeod said that he ran at the animal ‘pumping my arms up and down, yelling at the top of my lungs and jumping up trying to look big and distracting.’
The attempt to distract the bull bison apparently paid off, as other onlookers soon joined in and the creature subsequently ran off.
McDaniel broke his femur – the strongest bone in the body – in four places near his hip in the assault
When MacLeod then ran up to McDaniel, who is known as a community activist in the town of Kendall, Washington, ‘the first thing he asked is “How is my grandson?”‘ he told Fox News.
‘It really felt like the grandfather kind of saved his grandson,’ MacLeod said. ‘[He’d] taken the brunt of the attack.’
As McDaniel then waited for an ambulance to arrive, a nurse at the scene tended to his leg while another bystander held his head.
Park regulations require visitors to stay about 75 feet from the bison at all times, leading some online commenters to speculate about whether McDaniel had been closer than that.
However, MacLeod said that ‘most people [saw] that these two did not ask for it’ and that everyone he observed that day kept a ‘respectful distance.’
The Daily Mail has reached out to Yellowstone for comment.
