You certainly don’t see a never ending stream of elk every day.
Traffic can be incredibly frustrating. I don’t have to really tell you that… we all know it, and we’ve all had at least a temporary moment of road rage (right?). Stand still traffic jams always come at the worst possible time, and there’s nothing worse than adding minutes – if not hours – to a trip or commute.
But does an elk-induced-traffic-jam make the wait any better?
The silver lining is that this kind of traffic beats your typical gridlock any day of the week. I guarantee you that you’ve never stopped to admire the hundreds of cars in front of you, but you’d likely be happy to put the car in park to watch hundreds of elk stampede across the road.
Animal-induced traffic is more common than you think. If you don’t believe me, you are welcome to check into this traffic jam that was caused by bison, or feel free to watch this video of a parade of elk running across a Montana highway. When you live out in the nature, you’re obviously more likely to cross paths with it. Or in this case, have your path stopped.
From the sound of this story though, a Montana woman by the name of Michelle Dralle wasn’t trying to get around the endless elk herd that was traversing the icy road. Dralle instead happened to see the large amount of elk galloping through the snow from her home, and decided to go capture their road-crossing efforts on video, as the video’s caption explained:
“A woman who lives near Bozeman looked out her kitchen window Wednesday morning and this is what she saw. She was able to capture the herd on video and said the elk were still coming after five minutes of filming.”
Five minutes of non-stop, elk herd movement is insane.
Elk are known to run up to 40 miles per hour, though the herd in this video seemed to be slowed down by the thick snow accumulation. They were still able to show off their impressive vertical jumping ability as they faced off against the the wired fence. At least most of them of were able to show off… some had to attempt the fence jump a couple of times before they got it.
And if you were wondering if that’s a normal amount of elk to be included in a herd, let’s just say it’s not out of the ordinary. Herds have been known to be made up by around 400 elk, especially during the summer months. Feel free to take the time to count how many elk were a part of this grouping… but I think it’s safe to estimate that the herd easily surpasses the 400 number.
Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t think I’d mind at all to put the car in park and stay a while. From the looks of the footage, these elk acted as a moving roadblock for quite some time. With the “Big Sky Country” in the background, this is about as beautiful as a traffic jam can get.
Take a look:
