As the great Paul McCartney (and the Wings) once said, do the elk a favor, open the door, and let him in.
The song doesn’t go exactly like that, though it’s close enough to help tell the story of this bull elk in Estes Park, Colorado. And just so we’re all on the same page, Estes Park is actually the name of the town in Colorado, which is basically adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park. Now that we’ve got that cleared up (did we really need to?), we can move on.
Estes Park is a beautiful town located in Northern Colorado, and is home to those who love the outdoors and “mountain living.” The area is also called home by a number of different wildlife populations, including moose, sheep, deer, bears, and elk, among other animals.
If you’ve been, you know the elk in Estes Park are as common as squirrels in any other town in America… they’re everywhere.
Which brings us to this video, which shows a mature bull elk walking around near a lodge in the Estes Park area. People standing within the entryway of the building originally had the door open, seeming to welcome in the big, antlered beast.
However, once it got close enough, the people closed the door to stay safe indoors (props to them, some people aren’t so smart). The decision to shut the door seemed to upset the elk, who then walked by all of the “check in” parking spots and bugled as loud as you’ll ever hear an elk bugle.
Now, was the bull elk upset that it didn’t get to go into the lodge to check in? Or was it instead chasing down a cow elk that we see standing off in the distance later on in the video?
Considering that bull elk commonly show off their bugling skills to impress cow elk, it’s probably the latter rather than the former.
However, I like to imagine that the bull elk and the cow elk in the clip were already together, and the bugle was more of a distressful call because he knows his elk wife is going to be upset that he didn’t get to book a room at the lodge.
You’ll have to watch the video yourself and see which story you want to go with:
