Nature is brutal.
It’s especially brutal if you are a member of the deer family. It just seems like the whole world wants to eat them all. Deer, moose, elk, at the end of the day are all members of the deer family and a favorite of predators and hunters alike.
For elk, it’s a rough life like them all just from day one. Whatever can, is trying to kill them from the time they are babies to when they are old and weak if they get there. Everything out there has to eat and only the strong survive.
Brown bears are known to be predators and lovers of elk far and wide. While coastal bears love fish, interior bears, commonly called grizzlies, seem to love elk. The easiest to catch are the young and old, leaving bears to be a large predators of young elk in the spring of the year.
They’re also easy to catch when they are mortally wounded.
This brown bear put the brutality of nature on full display when it stumbled upon this elk who was most likely hit by a car. You can see in the video that the legs looks pretty mangled, which led wildlife photographer Kevin Fuchs to suspect that it was involved in some kind of car accident:
“This grizzly bear was seen earlier on this elk that had previous injuries consisting of one, if not both, back legs broken. It is not clear as to what happened to this elk prior, although there’s some assumptions it could have gotten hit by a vehicle earlier on.
I showed up to this scene later but apparently the grizzly bear drug this elk further into where I have now stepped into film.”
The brown bear is seen munching down on the rear end of an elk. The elk is still kicking and moving its head as the bear eats away. The elk would’ve undoubtedly died either way, whether it starved to death, died from internal injuries, or was picked apart by a different predator like wolves… but man, what a tough way to go.
That is some wild stuff, but that is how it goes out there in the wilderness.
