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After a terrifying bison attack at Yellowstone National Park left Carl Isom-McDaniel with a broken leg, the grandfather from Kendall, Washington is speaking out about the harrowing experience.
“We saw the bison and he was down. He wasn’t showing aggression or anything like that until it picked a target. That target happened to be me,” Isom-McDaniel said in a video taken from his hospital room at Bozeman Health, a hospital in Southwest Montana.
“They move faster than you could ever imagine,” he added, referring to bison in general. “He just kept coming, and he was more aggressive. As soon as he got off that tree, he launched me in the air,” said the grandfather, who was attacked on July 10.
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Isom-McDaniel was with his grandson at Bridge Bay Campground near Yellowstone Lake that evening.
“I didn’t get bruises from him launching me in [the] air. It was the landing that [caused] the problem,” Isom-McDaniel said.
The grandfather, said to be in his mid-60s, broke his femur in four places and underwent surgery. He’s been recovering at the Montana hospital, according to several reports.
“It was definitely clear that he had a pretty painful injury. It’s actually broken in multiple pieces,” a doctor who treated Isom-McDaniel said in the Bozeman Health video.
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From the start, Isom-McDaniel’s goal was to protect his grandson.
“It was like, you need to get up to the amphitheater. I will deal with this down here,” the grandfather said, recalling what he told his grandson.
Photographer Mike McLeod, who witnessed the terrifying attack, said he believes Isom-McDaniel saved his grandson.
“Once I saw the victim in the air, I stopped filming and ran with some other men to haze the bison away and to render aid,” MacLeod told Fox News Digital earlier in an interview.
“It really felt to me like the grandfather kind of saved his grandson. [He’d] taken the brunt of the attack,” he said.
“I got to him right away, and the first thing he asked is, ‘How is my grandson?'” recalled MacLeod, a veteran.
The victim never lost consciousness during the attack despite suffering multiple broken bones, Fox News “America’s Newsroom” reported.
“For some reason [the bison] had it in his head he was going to attack those two [people],” the photographer recalled.
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Reports indicate that neither Isom-McDaniel nor his grandson did anything to provoke the animal.
The bull had already charged a group of teenagers before stopping to wallow in the dirt near the campground.
“Less than even a minute after I started filming, the bison charged a bunch of teenagers that were at a safe distance,” the photographer said.
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“They were all young and nimble, so they just scattered,” he said.
“But they started yelling, ‘Hey, everyone watch out. There’s a bison.’ … There were a lot of campers in the camp.”
Later, MacLeod feared the animal was about to gore the injured grandfather — prompting him to put down his camera and run toward the bison, yelling and waving his arms.
Other campground visitors assisted until the animal retreated.
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Isom-McDaniel said the hospital has been taking great care of him.
“I always felt safe and secure. I wasn’t ever terrified,” he said.
Kelly McGreal of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
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