This seasonal mechanic driving through Yellowstone National Park did everything he could to avoid a bison standing in the middle of the road… and his car still took some damage.
Somewhere around 5,000 bison call Yellowstone National Park home, and Kyle Weber likely saw a lot of them while he was working in the national park for the summer at one of Yellowstone’s park service stations. He was actually heading home for the year when he had his closest encounter of the year.
It was a scene that almost feels like it was pulled out of a horror movie… and it was all caught on a dashboard camera.
North America’s largest land animals are pretty intimidating on their own, considering they weigh over 2,000 pounds. As it turns out, it’s a little scary to run into one in the dead of the night. That’s what happened to Weber, who told Cowboy State Daily that, as he was driving home just before 3 a.m. in the morning, he came around a corner and came face-to-face with a lone bison blocking the road:
“I was going through the trees, coming around the corner, and I saw a bison on the road. I slammed on my brakes and stopped and was just sitting there watching and waiting for him to continue walking.”
I’ve seen enough scary movies to know that something bad was going to happen.
The season mechanic did the right thing, and kept the car stopped as he hoped the bison would be spooked by his car and the headlights pointed right at it and walk away. It’s very normal to see a bison utilizing a roadway (the large animals often cause something called “bison jams”), but it was strange to see one acting as a roadblock in the wee hours of the morning.
Weber was just trying to wait the bison out when the horned antler kicked it into gear and ran right towards his vehicle. There wasn’t really any time to react, and within seconds, the bison had forcefully shoulder-checked his truck. The mechanic couldn’t believe how much force the bison hit his vehicle with:
“I definitely got jolted in that thing. I knew they hit hard, but that was pretty rough. It pushed my truck back at least a foot and a half.”
The bison dented the front bumper, completely broke the side marker light, and did some noticeable damage to the hood of the car as well.
That initially attack was all the bison had in the tank. After it made contact with Weber’s truck, it turned towards the trees and ran off into the night. It was a “wrong place, wrong time” situation for both the bison and the seasonal Yellowstone mechanic. A bison dent in the front part of his truck probably wasn’t the parting gift he was hoping for while he left Yellowstone National Park.
All in all, it’s a wild video out of Yellowstone National Park… and it just goes to show that even when you do everything right, things can go wrong when wild animals are involved:
