Animal Encounters

[MikeL]

In October, a photographer had an unusual encounter with a young bull elk in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.  The elk probably had more fun than the photographer.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xGQExgOxZMQ

[Palantir]

Wow! That is an encounter that guy will never forget.

[Suvitar]

That looked scary and those horns rather dangerous. 

[Mann Ramblings]

Damn teenagers! Always trying to pick a fight.

[Kitt]

And Wings wondered why we would not let her out of the truck to take pics when we were in the same area!

[Mann Ramblings]

He's lucky he didn't get accidentally skewered, especially when he stood up. That gut of his was a big target. LOL

Edited March 11, 2014 by Mann Ramblings

[blake_logan]

The Park Service euthanized the elk.  They tried relocating him a couple of times, but he kept coming back and interacting too closely with park visitors.  This interaction was the last straw.

[Kitt]

Sad but sometimes necessary. A shame park visitors taught him not to fear humans.

[Slytherin]

Scary ! I couldn't sit down like that, I would probably scream at the top of my lungs   Hoping Jo Ann would show up with her gun, scaring the elk (not shooting it)

[Cia]

Those animals are dangerous. Think... untrained colt with skewers. AND they use them too. As beautiful as elk are in the wild, they belong in the wild and not near people--unless we're trying to hunt them when they always seem to disappear! Still, animals can be hilarious. We have a mini apple tree in our front yard that is always popular in the fall. I got this pic this year (safely inside through the window, thank you).

 

[Aaron Penrose]

They are extremely dangerous. At first watching this made me nervous, because I kept thinking that elk was trying to hurt him, but then the longer I watched, I kept hearing the elk say, "Man, get your ass outta here, I'm just trying to do elk stuff. You're weirding me out with the camera." He was only playing! It's a shame he was euthanized. 

 

I believe I have been to that exact place before, but we didn't see many animals. I remember in Cade's Cove, we saw two bull whitetail deer fighting, and people were getting out of their cars to film them. There was actually a semicircle of people filming around these two deer that were trying to kill each other. As in twenty feet away. It was nuts. All of us were completely expecting someone to get gored. I've heard tons of horror stories about people getting hurt by rutting deer.

[wildone]

I got a laugh out the the words at the beginning.

 

The photographer was taking pictures from a safe distance, then the young bull elk decided to cause trouble! Your kidding me right. He should have got up and left when he saw the elk getting closer to him where he wasn't a safe distance from him anymore.

 

The fact that the elk had to be put down in a national park only goes to show that the photographer and other humans were the cause of his death. In Canada it is illegal to feed, touch (harass) a wild animal.

 

But hey, they got some good pictures and video in exchange for the elk's life, right?

[Kitt]

I've also seen some idiotic humans in that area. There were two bear cubs in a tree right at roadside on the Clingmans Dome road. People were getting right under the tree to take pics. They were small cubs and all I could think of was "Where is momma and what will they do when she comes back?"

Edited March 12, 2014 by Kitt

[MikeL]

I had not heard that the elk had to be killed.  That is unfortunate.

 

It seems that wild animals which are stuck in places with a lot of people tend to become tame...tame meaning unafraid of the humans.  When we lived in Yosemite National Park, the deer would walk right up to you  and lick your hand.  The bears were also unafraid of humans and would walk into the community where we lived to raid the garbage cans and climb trees.  The humans did not hold out their hands to be licked.

 

And then there was that mountain lion...

[Sasha Distan]

aww, he wants to play! on the other hand, terrifying.