The funny thing about wild animals is that they’ll happily let you know when you are getting too close.
If you need video evidence of that, look no further than this man invading the personal space of a bull elk in Estes Park, Colorado. Sure, the elk had wandered into the streets and sidewalks of the area known to be basecamp or gateway for Rocky Mountain National Park. But that doesn’t give the permission to treat a wild animal like it’s in a petting zoo.
In case you didn’t know, Estes Park is considered to be the “Elk Capital of the World.” It’s estimated that over 280,000 elk live in Colorado, which is enough to give the state the honor of housing the largest concentrated population of elk in the world. Believe it or not, that many elk bring in tourists from all over the planet, particularly to the Estes Park area.
So it’s practically a guarantee to see elk there if you were to visit, and the people in this video really got a close-up encounter with the area’s elk population. The National Park Service recommends that tourists stay at least 25 yards away from what they call non-dangerous animals (that extends to 50 yards for animals like bears and wolves). Spoiler alert: the guy in this video that was nearly gored got much closer than that.
It appears that a bull elk was eyeing some cows that were across the street, and while that was happening, a guy in a blue shirt was taking pictures of the antlered animal standing near him. As the male elk walked out into the street, the man followed it so that he could capture snapshots (he’s apparently never heard of the zoom feature on cameras).
With a siren wailing in the distance, the bull elk froze to try and get a read on the traffic, all while keeping tabs on the man behind him. The guy in the blue shirt was even warned by the camera man early on that the elk would “gore his a** real quick,” and that still didn’t stop him from getting closer and closer.
Eventually, the bull elk had enough, and charged the blue shirt, flip-flop-wearing man, which prompted verbal responses from people nearby like these:
“What’s wrong with you, man?”
“What are you doing, dude?”
“Not smart, man. Not smart.”
Definitely not smart to sneak up on a wild animal while you are wearing flip flops.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you were rooting for the animal), the man was able to walk away in his open-toed shoes unharmed. Here’s to hoping that he learned his lesson… though if people immediately around him were telling him not to get closer to something, and he still did it, blue shirt guy might be too far gone.
The person who filmed all of this shared this comment as the video’s caption:
“Thought I was gonna get my million dollar video, myself and others told this jackass to stay away from this bull elk. This is why we need to take the warning labels off and let nature take its course.”
