A seasonal mechanic stopped his Ford Ranger for a bison on a dark Yellowstone road, then the animal charged, slammed the truck, and pushed it backward before trotting away.
Kyle Weber was driving through Yellowstone National Park around 2:45 a.m. when a bull bison appeared in his headlights on a two-lane road. He hit the brakes, waited, and still got rammed.
Breitbart reported the nighttime encounter, with Weber describing how he tried to give the animal room and still took the hit. Video later circulated on Facebook after a user shared the footage.
Weber, a seasonal mechanic, told Cowboy State Daily what he saw coming around a wooded corner.
"I was going through the trees, coming around the corner, and I saw a bison on the road,"
He said he stopped cold and waited for the animal to move on.
"I slammed on my brakes and stopped and was just sitting there watching and waiting for him to continue walking."
The bison did not keep walking. It closed in, charged the front of the Ranger, and shoved the truck back.
Weber said the impact was harder than he expected.
"I knew they hit hard, but that was pretty rough. It pushed my truck back at least a foot and a half."
He got jolted in the cab. The truck still ran. The headlight worked. But the front end was not the same.
“My wheel scrapes against the bumper when I do sharp turns, but the headlight and everything else works fine,” Weber said. “Not as bad as it could have been, but still not great.” He also said, “I definitely got jolted in that thing.”
Facebook user Stephen Borgmier posted the video and put the scene between Mud Volcano and Fishing Bridge. His caption left little doubt about who rules the pavement inside the park.
"The Bison do own the roads in Yellowstone. A friend of mine was between Mud Volcano and Fishing Bridge and he found out the hard way. Watch until the end. He was angry,"
Whether Borgmier’s friend was Weber is not clear from the available accounts. The lesson in the clip is clear enough either way.
Weber’s wreck was not the park’s only recent reminder. Months earlier, grandfather Carl Isom-McDaniel was tossed about eight feet by a bull bison in Yellowstone and suffered broken bones.
Professional photographer Mike MacLeod captured that frightening moment and later described Isom-McDaniel’s condition after the attack.
"He was in a lot of pain with his leg, and otherwise he was conscious the whole time, in good spirits, joking,"
No park citation, arrest, or formal incident report is detailed in the accounts of Weber’s crash. No injury beyond the jolt is described for the driver. The calendar date of the truck strike is not pinned down beyond the early-morning hour.
What is pinned down is the sequence. Weber stopped. The bison still charged. The Ranger moved backward. The animal walked off down the road as if nothing unusual had happened.
In Yellowstone, the wildlife does not yield because a driver did the careful thing. People who treat bison like scenery keep learning that the hard way.
