A bull elk in Estes Park, Colorado, is strutting proudly around town with a broken-off piece of a rival's antler jabbed into his upper neck.
“He seems to be doing just fine. He’s kind of wearing it (the antler chunk) like a prize,” wildlife photographer Kristy Williams told Cowboy State Daily.
Retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Bruce Smith, formerly with the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily that as long as the antler point didn’t puncture a major blood vessel or cause serious nerve damage, the bull’s odds of survival are good.
Word around town is that the bull got into a fierce fight with another bull Sunday, and during the brawl one of the other bull’s antler tines stabbed his neck and snapped off, she said.
Elk have entered the rut, or mating season, during which bulls can get into vicious fights as they try to lay claim to harems of cows.
Estes Park is famous for a huge herd of elk that migrates in and out of Rocky Mountain National Park and takes over the town every spring and fall.
‘Are You Insane?’
Some of Estes Park's elk become famous enough to get names, such as the legendary Atlas, or “Split 5” bull, which was legally killed by a hunter last fall.
Willams said that to her knowledge, the bull with the antler in his neck doesn’t have a name.
Although, given his growing fame on social media because of his grim new appendage, that might change.
The bull is well-known and has a distinctive patch of white hair over one of his eyes.
“That might be because of a scar from a previous fight,” she said.
Williams said when she posted a video of the bull on her Colorado Wild Photography Facebook page, it was hugely popular.
But the cluelessness of some of the comments floored her.
“There must be 300 comments saying ‘go up to the bull and pull it out,' supposedly to save it,” she said.
“And I’m like, 'Are you insane?’”
Others have wondered why the bull doesn’t have a veterinarian to tend to it, apparently unaware that’s not how it works with animals, she added.
Never Seen Anything Like It
Williams was on the road Wednesday when she spoke over the phone to Cowboy State Daily.
She returned to Estes Park and saw early Thursday that the antler had fallen out of the bull's neck.
From what she’s seen so far, “there’s no blood visible” where the antler point pierced the bull’s hide, Williams said.
John Winnie Jr., an associate teaching professor in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University, told Cowboy State Daily he’s seen the aftermath of plenty of bull elk battles.
“I’ve never seen that,” he said of an antler sticking out of the Estes Park bull’s neck.
He’s seen video and agreed that “the wound doesn’t seem to be producing blood.”
He wouldn’t speculate what the outcome might be.
Bull elk can usually work out their differences without killing or seriously maiming each other, Winnie said.
Although “bull bison mortally injure each other fairly frequently,” he said.
Optimistic Prognosis
Smith also noted that he’d never seen an elk with a piece of another bull’s antler stuck in it.
He recalled once examining the carcass of a bull elk that died on the National Elk Refuge.
“That one had a puncture right between its eye and its nose,” he said.
“I assumed that it was an antler puncture, but we couldn’t tell for sure,” he said.
Elk have thick hair, hide, and muscle in their necks, Smith noted.
So long as the antler point is buried only in muscle, the Estes Park bull has a reasonable chance of survival, he said.
Elk have a remarkable ability to fight infections, Smith said.
While getting impaled on each other’s antlers isn’t a huge risk, sometimes fighting bulls can get their antlers hopelessly entangled.
He recalled that happening once on the refuge, with the bulls locked together and thrashing until they were exhausted.
“One of our staff went out there with a shotgun loaded with slugs, shot the antlers off of one, and freed them both,” he said.
Texas outdoorsman Barrett Liquori employed the same tactic last winter. He used his 9mm handgun to blow off the antler of white-tailed buck that was hopelessly entangled with another dead buck.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
