An interesting story out of the wilderness

This amazing story comes from our neighbors to the west where Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers finally got the opportunity to help a bull elk get rid of an unwanted heavy burden.

In July 2019, while conducting a population survey for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and mountain goats in the Mount Evans Wilderness, wildlife officer Jared Lamb spotted a bull elk with a tire around its neck. At the time the bull appeared to be a younger one, likely two years old.

This bull elk has spent the past couple of years traveling back and forth between Park and Jefferson Counties. He would disappear for long periods of time, particularly in the winter, and was acting as expected from a wild animal—not wanting to be around human pres

ence. That is much different than some of the resident elk we are used to seeing in towns such as Evergreen or Estes Park.

At the end of May and into June 2021, four attempts were made to catch up with this bull in the Pleasant Park area of Conifer. Sightings of him picked back up in September Bull elk with tire around his neck and early October near the town of Pine. Colorado Parks and Wildlife Officer Scott Murdoch felt the rut (breeding season) played a helpful role in catching up with the bull.

“In the winter we weren’t getting any reports of him,” Murdoch said. “In the springtime, we would get an occasional report or see him in a little bachelor herd. The rut definitely made him more visible. There was a bigger bull in the group he was with on Saturday, but he (the one with the tire) is getting to be a decent size bull.” It was the fourth attempt wildlife officers had made in the last week to try to tranquilize this bull.

After living with a tire around its neck for at least the last two years, Murdoch and fellow CPW Officer Scott Dawson were finally able to tranquilize the bull on Saturday, Oct. 9, and remove the tire. The bull elk, that Wildlife officers aged as a four-and-a-half year-old weighing over 600 pounds, had five points on each of its antler beams. Dawson and Murdoch had to cut the antlers off the bull elk in order to remove the tire. The officers would have preferred to cut the tire and leave the antlers for his rutting activity, but they weren’t able to cut the steel in the bead of the tire. As it was, the situation was critical, and they had to get the tire off in any way possible. Even after cutting its antlers off, it was tight removing the tire, but the bull’s neck still had a little room to move.

Once the tire was off, wildlife officers Swanson and Murdoch were surprised to see the condition of its neck after having that tire on it for over two years. “The hair was rubbed off a little bit, there was one small open wound maybe the size of a nickel or quarter, but other than that it looked really good,” Murdoch said of the bull’s neck. “I was actually quite shocked to see how good it looked.”

Swanson and Murdoch estimated that the bull elk dropped roughly 35 pounds between the removal of his antlers, the tire, and the debris inside the tire. “The tire was full of wet pine needles and dirt,” Murdoch said. “So the pine needles, dirt and other debris basically filled the entire bottom half of the tire. There was probably 10 pounds of debris in the tire.”

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials reminded residents that the saga of this bull elk highlights the need to live responsibly with wildlife in mind. That includes keeping properties free of obstacles that wildlife can get tangled in or injured by. Wildlife officers have seen deer, elk, moose, bears and other wildlife become entangled in a number of man-made obstacles that include swing sets, hammocks, clotheslines, decorative or holiday lighting, furniture, tomato cages, chicken feeders, laundry baskets, soccer goals or volleyball nets, and yes, tires.

Look out, girls! This is one bull elk that took a little nap and woke up feeling refreshed... and 35 pounds lighter!