Dad Claps Back At “Keyboard Warriors” After Rutting Bison Charges Family At Yellowstone National Park

A family trip to the great outdoors gone wrong.

There’s usually no better way to introduce the young generations to the wonders of nature than by visiting a national park. Loading up the car and road tripping to the nearest national park is as American as it gets… and almost getting attacked by wild animals also seems to be an American right of passage.

This family was making a trip to the iconic Yellowstone National Park, which, first signed into law in 1872, is the world’s oldest national park. And while everyone wants to see some bison, the fun family outing quickly turned into a tense fight for survival.

The rutting bison seemed to be honed in on the youngest girl wearing a bright pink sweatshirt, and the patriarch of the bunch gave her some pretty good instructions in the heat of the moment:

“Don’t move. Stay there. Get up against the tree and don’t move.”

Though the family shouldn’t have been that close to the bison in the first place, this was the correct course of action once it was too late to avoid them entirely. Playing dead during a bison attack has been shown to work on occasion, but isn’t exactly recommend. Nor, do you want to try and “get big” as if you were trying to intimidate a bear.

Instead, you want to stand still or move very slowly away from the animal. The father was trying to direct his family to get out of the sight lines of the big beasts, as well as getting everyone to stop running and flailing so they didn’t trigger the bison’s chasing instincts.

As you’ll be able to see in the scary footage below, everyone that got way too close for comfort to these 2,000 pound beasts was incredibly lucky that things didn’t end with someone getting seriously injured:

Talk about a close call.

Thankfully, it doesn’t look like anyone was harmed during this tense encounter with two bison… at least not on the video we got to see.

However, that didn’t stop people in the comment section for calling out the family for putting themselves in this situation in the first place:

“The stupidity is just astounding!”

“Why would you ever walk around with your family with wild bison nearby?”

“Play stupid games…win stupid prizes.”

“Why are they outside of their car? Those are not pets.”

“People are stupid.”

But… as always, there’s more to the story.

The family posted a video, describing what happened, and it might serve as a reminder to people not to assume you know what happened just because you saw a viral video on the internet.

The father in the situation explains that they were watching the bison from a very safe distance when the bison started charging toward a crowd of people.

“Here is the actual video with context about what happened to my family at Yellowstone National Park. One of the most visited parks in the world, while we were walking on a paved walkway. We saw the Bison from over 200 yards away while we just left the Old Faithful geyser. It was clearly upset running in our direction.

I walked my family behind the tree to use it as a buffer between us and the bison. As it passed us it turned and chased me. When I saw my daughter coming around the other tree I decided to stop as I didn’t want the bison to hit her. The bison luckily did not run through me but instead turned around.”

He goes on to explain that bison had just lost a battle to another, in the early stages of the rut, and he was mad as all hell.

The bison rut, which is what the breeding season is called for certain mammals like bison, deer, elk, and more, generally will begin in mid-July and run through early September. Cows, which are female bison, go into heat and the bulls (males) look to attract a mate by smashing heads with other males to establish their dominance. Bulls will often times mate with multiple females during a season.

He continues:

“This was a case of wrong place at the wrong time. The bison had just lost a rut [battle] to the second bison that follows a few moments later.

To all of the keyboard warriors out there I understand that you have to find ways to make yourself feel special by writing negative things about other people, but my kids probably have experienced more positive and memory making things in their lives than you will in your entire lives.

Take this as advice to get up and get off your phone and go outside.”

Not gonna lie, I love the clapback. Whole lotta people in the comments have never been anywhere near Yellowstone National Park.