Anatomy Lesson and the Tenacity of an Elk to Survive

[lancetkenyon]

On the recent hunt with my daughter in her quest for her first elk, we hiked a ton. Way up on top of a hill in a small bowl, we found the remains of an elk that had perished there, sometime a while ago before the fire. While looking at the bones, I found a set of front lower leg bones, with one hoof, nearby each other. It was a great opportunity to teach my daughter about life, pain, and how modern medicine vs. nature works. It was also a lesson about the tenacity of animals to cling to life. How they can endure disabling breaks and go on living.

 

How many of us hunters can say the same, by letting nature take it's course and heal without modern medicine? It gives me great respect for the game we pursue to realize how much they have to endure to make it in the wild.

 

I hope, in all we do, that we strive as ethical hunters to take game cleanly out of respect for the animals we chase. I realize sometimes game cannot be recovered, but we as sportsmen should make every effort to retrieve the game we shoot. Also, realize that not all game that is hit poorly die. Some will recover and continue on.

 

Here are the photos of the leg bones we found. I know I would not want to have to endure a bone knitting itself without a cast.

 

 

 

[Couestracker]

Interesting! Thanks for sharing those pictures.

[BruinPoint]

That's a cool find!

[Chris]

Wow....very cool.

 

Elk, are tough animals for sure!

[azelkhunter69]

Shot a whitetail doe in NY a long time ago and I saw she had a deformed rear leg. She had been shot the previous year. It broke her leg and it healed crooked. I even found the old slug in her leg when I skinned her. Tough animals.

[More D]

Very interesting...

 

This is a rear leg bone from a Bull Elk I took more than a few years ago. We found three total bullets in him. One in each front sholder, right where we all ideally aim and the last in this rear leg bone. Both front bullets just plain did not peretrate more than 2-3 inches. The rear leg had a softball sized groth of cartilage type growth around the injury. All if the bullets were recovered too. They were very deformed but looked small and very light jacketed.

[lancetkenyon]

AWESOME BONE! Good to know elk can survive some of this stuff. Sad to hear they have to endure it by improper shots or bullets.

[Swivelhead]

Great pictures, thanks for posting them.

 

Helped a friend process a bear many years ago. It was a really nice mature boar. Bear was missing an eye (not that unusual). What was unusual, at some point in his life he had suffered a separated sternum. The sternum healed but his ribs were offset 2 inches. Figured he'd been hit by a car at some point. Bear was fat as a tick and appeared healthy.

Another time, I came upon an extremely emaciated cow elk. She was feeding on the side of the Diamond Rock road just after spring melt (back when we used to get a snowpack). She was so skinny, literally had ulcers where her hip bones contacted her hide. Her jaw was broken and offset, her teeth did not mesh but she was happily munching away. I approached her within 10 feet and noticed that her eyes were blue (obviously, she was blind). I agonized over putting her out of her misery for 30 minutes. She kept sacking groceries the whole time. Felt really bad but decided she had just survived a tough winter and it was up to nature to determine her fate.

[Alpinebullwinkle]

The first year after the fire I viewed numerous elk limping around from broken legs suffered presumably from falling in a burned out tree stump depression while running from a predator. In fact we have a crippled cow elk that resides permanently in the town of Alpine (the last 3 years) very wisely since she knows she can no longer escape predators in the wild.