photosynthesis opened this issue on Mar 08, 2014 · 8 posts
photosynthesis posted Sat, 08 March 2014 at 9:49 PM
This is actually kind of crazy & scary, but fortunately for this photographer, ended well:
helanker posted Sun, 09 March 2014 at 5:19 AM
Scary indeed. He could have been inpaled by the antlers so easily. He was pretty lucky, the creature was mostly just curious. Thanks forsharing the link.
jayfar posted Mon, 10 March 2014 at 10:41 AM
The poor chap had to undergo a two pronged attack - lucky he wasn't injured.
auntietk posted Mon, 10 March 2014 at 12:57 PM
Whoever took the movie totally scored! LOL! I want to know if the guy who was being head-butted got any good shots. :)
"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." ... Robert Capa
TomDart posted Tue, 11 March 2014 at 10:19 AM
Unfortunately it did not end well for the young elk. Wildlife agency officials had the elk put down, considering it too human friendly after the incident. Likely it was too tame to people but what caused that was unfortunately other people over a period of time ignoring "do not feed" and other warnings, put in place to protect people but also to protect the wildlife. Very soon after the video hit the net and the tv, the elk was dead.
To put himself in the position was stupid...nothing less than that. A WILD animal is wild, is wild, is wild..even if it get cocy with prople.
photosynthesis posted Tue, 11 March 2014 at 10:39 AM
I wasn't aware of this outcome. It's very sad that this animal was euthanzied for being "too friendly". It seems like some effort could have been made to find him another home - a wildlife park, sanctuary or zoo.
TomDart posted Tue, 11 March 2014 at 11:14 AM
I agree 100%. Elk were released in the park area as a reintroduction to a place they once lived freely. Survival is good. A little poaching happens but not often. Black bears face the same problem, mostly from being fed by people and human food trash left out, attracting the bears-- a problem known to many wilderness parks. Relocation appears to work in many cases. In this event, I strongly felt the authorities jumped too quickly to an easy way out. There are preserves and places which would welcome such a neat animal. The Smoky Mountains National Park has large areas with no human habitation. Are the elk there? I don't know. If so, it looks like relocation could have been attempted in the least for the sake of the young elk. I wanted to know more of why the decision to kill was made but the news vanished quickly on this event.
http://thomashaynes.zenfolio.com/ ( a plug for a webside, not connected to the thread)
Thomas (typo from my previous post, cocy was supposed to be cozy)
blinkings posted Fri, 21 March 2014 at 6:26 AM
What an amazing video. Thanks for posting.