12-Year-Old Hospitalized After Bison Attack Near Mud Volcano in Yellowstone

A 12-year-old was taken to a nearby hospital Friday morning after a bison encounter at Yellowstone National Park, according to a National Park Service statement. The incident happened around 9:15 a.m. near Mud Volcano, which sits just north of Fishing Bridge.

The NPS did not disclose the child's gender, the nature or severity of the injuries, or what led to the encounter. The agency said only that "the visitor sustained injuries, and emergency medical personnel transported them to a nearby hospital," and confirmed the incident remains under investigation.

Details Still Unclear

Yellowstone has not released details about how close the child was to the bison or whether park rules were violated. The 25-yard minimum distance rule for bison — and 100 yards for bears and wolves — is a firm park requirement, not a suggestion. Whether that rule was followed is one of the open questions investigators will need to answer.

Biologist George Wuerthner, who has worked in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for decades and serves as president of the Montana Wild Bison Coalition, told Cowboy State Daily that bison do signal aggression before charging. "If they stick their tail up in the air, that's how they indicate to the herd that something is wrong," he said, comparing it to a white-tailed deer raising its tail.

As for what triggered the encounter specifically, Wuerthner was direct: without a full account of events, it's hard to say. "The usual thing is people getting too close," he said. He also pushed back on the common misconception that Yellowstone bison, because they seem calm around crowds, are safe to approach. "People tend to think of them like cattle. But then again, cattle hurt people too, so that's not a good assumption to make."

Wildlife photographer April Holm, who visits Yellowstone regularly, told Cowboy State Daily she had witnessed alarming bison behavior in the same general area a couple of weeks earlier. "We saw a very spicy bison, and a guy almost got gored by him," she said via text. She added she couldn't confirm it was the same animal involved in Friday's incident.

A Recurring Problem

This is the first bison-related injury reported at Yellowstone in 2026, according to the NY Post. But the pattern is well established. Two people were gored in separate incidents in May and June 2025. In 2024, two incidents occurred: one involving a man injured after he was caught harassing a bison herd in April, and a second person injured in June. One bison-related injury was reported in 2023.

The frequency is steady enough that this cannot credibly be called a fluke. People keep getting hurt, and the reason is almost always the same: treating a 2,000-pound wild animal like a backdrop for a photo.

The Other Side

Some visitors and advocacy groups argue that Yellowstone's trail and viewing infrastructure puts people in close proximity to bison corridors almost by design, and that signage and ranger presence aren't always adequate to manage the volume of tourists the park draws each summer. Millions of people visit annually, and the vast majority never have an incident. From that view, a handful of injuries per year across millions of visits reflects a risk that is real but not wildly out of proportion.

That argument has merit as far as it goes. But it sidesteps the fact that the 25-yard rule exists precisely because bison are unpredictable, and that rule is violated constantly by visitors who assume proximity is safe. The NPS enforces what it can, but it cannot physically stop every tourist from walking toward a bison for a better shot.

What Comes Next

The NPS confirmed the incident is still under investigation as of June 27, 2026. That investigation will determine whether the child or accompanying adults violated park rules, which could affect whether any fines or citations are issued. The results of that inquiry, if made public, will be the clearest indicator of what actually happened near Mud Volcano on Friday morning.