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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: (Montana) FWP kills elk that chased motorcycle, became aggressive toward public MISSOULA — At first it seemed friendly, or maybe just curious. Probably a little friendlier and nosier than a spike bull elk should be, there in the middle of Montana Highway 200 in the Ovando Valley 45 miles east of Missoula. But then it got this look in its eye … Heather Leigh of Missoula was riding a motorcycle down the Blackfoot Valley that sunny late afternoon two Sundays ago with her boyfriend, Glen Smith. Theirs was only one of a half dozen or more vehicles stopped by the elk, an occurrence that’s not all that unusual on the fringe of the Blackfoot-Clearwater Game Range. Leigh had a video camera and knew how to use it. The resulting 115-second clip has been a YouTube sensation since Leigh posted it last Thursday, pushing 60,000 views by Monday afternoon and topping 100,000 hits Tuesday. It’s called “Motorcycle Chased Down Highway by Elk in Rut,” which pretty much sums up the plot. The clip has gotten play on Facebook sites from the Boone and Crocket Club to the United Kingdom, where the tabloid newspaper Metro put it online and elicited a number of entertaining comments from the Brits. “This is not a (sic) elk it is a deer,” opined Tina Hvistendahl Jensen. “Yeah, but (can) he go on a roundabout?” wondered Dee Dee Vogt. “Lovely looking animal,” chimed in June Dunphy. “Feel sorry for it – hope it doesn’t get shot during the hunting season.” Alas, it didn’t make it that long. The young elk that spent most of the summer hanging around a ranch along lower Monture Creek had become too friendly, too forward, too dangerous hanging out on the highway in his first rutting season. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials shot it on Thursday – the same day Leigh posted it on YouTube. “It was a judgment call on our part,” FWP warden Capt. Joe Jaquith said Tuesday. “We were looking at the traffic hazard the animal was creating and its aggressive behavior toward the public. We felt that it was just too big of a risk to wait another week or 10 days for the hunting season and the safest thing to do would be to dispatch it.” The elk was field dressed and the meat taken to be processed for the local food bank. Jaquith said the decision to kill the elk was made before FWP was aware of the video, though he’s seen it plenty of times since —including on Fox News over the weekend. He said in the days after Leigh shot the video but before she posted it on YouTube, FWP got a call from a landowner in the area. The elk was on his property and “acting very aggressive toward his pets, toward his family member and toward his equipment,” the head warden said. “It was just one of those kind of goofy things. We dispatched an officer to it and when the officer got out, the elk was being aggressive toward him,” Jaquith said. He’s not claiming it necessarily happened in this case, but Jaquith said: “We do see this kind of behavior of (deer or elk) that at some point or other have been maybe taken in as a fawn or a calf. When they reach maturity, especially a buck, all of a sudden they become aggressive.” Helen Dobbins said no one “adopted” the elk. The Spokane woman, who was recently working in Ovando and staying with family, said the animal hung around her brother’s place all summer. Donald Carter knew better than to feed the elk, Dobbins said, but try as he might he couldn’t get it to leave. “We’ve always been taught to respect the wildlife, and nobody really fed him or anything,” she said. “He ate the grass and ate on the hay bales and different things that were out in the field. He just kind of befriended my brother and followed him around like a dog.” The elk was also tight with Carter’s billy goat, glimpses of which can be seen trailing the elk in the video. Perhaps the elk thought he was a domestic goat. “He was very gentle. That’s why I don’t understand why they would go and shoot him like that,” said Dobbins, who said the family is “very sad” about the outcome. “In my opinion, I feel like they could have tranquilized him and placed him somewhere else. I thought their job was to protect the animals. They went on this private property and just shot him.” Relocating the elk would have been “very problematic,” Jaquith said. “The only way we can do that is to drug the animal, and then we have concerns about, you know, a week or two later if it gets harvested during the hunting season after we pumped it full of narcotics. So this is a time of year when that’s probably not a consideration.” As is too often the case, many of the comments on sites that the video has appeared are accusatory and mean-spirited. Leigh, who couldn’t be reached for this story, was obviously upset when she heard the young elk had been killed but on Tuesday defended herself and her video on the YouTube site. “I don’t feel at all responsible. None,” she wrote. “I am sure it was bound to happen and it was a fun and exciting experience. No regrets. But thanks.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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