Doesn’t Matter The Season, Tourists Still Get Way Too Close To Bison

Daryl Adams of Keithville, Louisiana, had Yellowstone National Park’s Old Faithful webcam pulled up on his computer Thursday morning when he saw something that caught his attention. It wasn’t a natural wonder but another all-too-common spectacle.

“I have several screens in my office, and I always keep the webcam running on one,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Anytime there’s bison, the camera zooms in on them. And I just happened to notice those guys walking right by them.”

The tourists Adams noticed were well within the 25-yard distance that’s supposed to be kept between bison, elk, and most other Yellowstone animals. They seemed blissfully unaware of the potential peril.

“I thought it was kind of silly,” he said. “Those things are scary.”

Dale Fryling captured a similar incident on the Old Faithful webcam on Feb. 11. Two skiers were within 20 feet of a large male bison for a photo-op – and the bison was paying very close attention to them.

“Watch them get run over by a bison,” Fryling said. They weren’t, but that was more because of the bison’s restraint rather than the tourists’ respect for rules and safety.

Always Bet Bison

It’s a good year when a visitor isn’t gored by a bison in Yellowstone National Park. Unfortunately, the last several years haven’t been good years.

An 83-year-old woman was gored by a bison near Yellowstone Lake in June 2024. The woman sustained serious injuries from the bison, which the National Park Service said was incited to attack because it was defending its territory.

In July 2023, a 47-year-old woman was attacked and severely injured by a bison near Yellowstone’s Lake Lodge. A similar incident, where a woman was charged and stomped by a bison, occurred the same week in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.

On May 31, 2022, a 25-year-old woman was gored and thrown ten feet into the air by a bison at Black Sand Basin near Old Faithful. Park officials said the woman and several others had gotten too close to the bison when it charged.

Bison incidents in Yellowstone always make international headlines, so Adams is baffled by why people still gamble with their health and safety when it comes to bison.

“I think people either don’t respect the animals, or they don’t heed the advice they get multiple times a year,” he said. “Whether its Custer State Park (in South Dakota), Yellowstone, or Grand Teton, someone does something dumb and gets hurt.”

Adams was referring to the infamous 2020 incident where a bison charged at a 54-year-old woman and got its horns caught in her belt. The bison tossed the woman, removing her pants in the process.

“It’s not funny, but you almost have to laugh at it,” he said.

Always In Season

One common thread among these bison incidents is that they occurred during the summer, when Yellowstone is at its busiest. But in the 21st Century, there is no longer an off-season.

In 2024, 4,744,352 visitors visited Yellowstone, making it the second busiest year in the park after 2021. Park visitation has yet to breach the threshold of five million visits, but it’s getting close.

Summer still makes up the bulk of Yellowstone’s visitation, but the park has been busier in winter through snow coach and snowmobile tours between December and March. More people mean more potential for incidents, especially if visitors aren’t safe.

“Once people are given free rein to take themselves through the park, and they think that there's no one supervising them, rules no longer apply,” Jen Mignard, owner of the Facebook page Yellowstone National Park: Invasion of the Idiots, told Cowboy State Daily in 2024. “When they break loose, they do really dangerous activities.”

The first Yellowstone bison incident of 2024 wasn’t a goring. In April 2024, Clarence Yoder, 41, sustained minor injuries and was arrested after kicking a bison while intoxicated.

There's already been a near miss in 2025. After wolves attacked and killed a bison calf, a herd of bison stampeded onto the Lamar Valley road near Grizzly Overlook, heedless of the crowd of people who had been watching the spectacle unfold. 

Webcams are a relatively new way to witness the audacity of Yellowstone visitors in real time. They might think they have the park all to themselves, but the world is watching,

“I keep the webcam up all the time, and I’ve done that for as long as I can remember,” Adams said. “It lets me escape from the reality of work. I just happened to notice these guys.”

It goes to show that there’s no season for stupidity in Yellowstone. Whenever people are in the park, there’s the potential for bad choices, reckless decisions, and serious injuries.

“It’s over-tourism and this sense of familiarity that people have because they do see the pictures,” Mignard said. “When (tourists) have this false sense of security due to familiarity, that's a recipe for trouble.

Contact Andrew Rossi at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com

Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.