Trophy Elk!!!

[rockgremlin]

I frequently travel to south-central Utah for work - from Price south to Alton and over the hill to Cedar City. So when they shut down Hwy 6 a few weeks ago because of the Pole Creek fire I was forced to take the alternate route to Price via State Route 40 through Duchesne. As I neared Starvation Reservoir, I noticed a blue Subaru parked on the shoulder of the road. As I passed I looked over and discovered the reason why it was parked there. Apparently it had a close encounter of the Elk kind.

HUGE cow elk! I hope the driver was ok. Nobody was around when I snapped these, and by the looks of it this incident had just barely happened within hours of me driving past since the elk showed no signs of decay and the car's dashboard was still beeping. The elk had a HUGE belly. At first I was tempted to say bloat -- but it appeared to have just recently occurred, and the weather was cooler. It couldn't have been preggo -- it's not the season for that....or is it? Maybe just distended due to massive internal damage? I dunno. The Forensic Files in me wants to know...


Anyway...be careful out there, folks!!


The Scene
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The Elk
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The Damage
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[Sombeech]

Yowza.

[middlefork]

My guess is bloat. It doesn't take long if it is warm or the sun gets on them.
This time of year they are getting bred, they won't have calfs until spring.

[Iceaxe]

Elk and horses are a bad thing to hit as they have a habit of coming through the windshield.

[BruteForce]

It very well could be pregnant. When I dropped two cow elk January of this year (2018), both were pregnant - which candidly made it easier to gut them because we had more solid material to grab onto. Yeah, I know -- its gross, but it is what it is.

[rockgremlin]

^^^ Even grosser question: Were the calfs developed enough to consider for meat?

[middlefork]

Brute if she was pregnant she is a matter of a few weeks pregnant at best. The rut started roughly 4 weeks ago. Yes January is different but still not quite veal yet.