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.
Elk in Montana
Montana is home to one of the largest and most robust elk populations in North America, boasting an estimated 130,000 to 140,000 elk statewide. Elk are highly social and live in massive herds that can number in the hundreds. For most of the year, the herds are strictly segregated by sex, with cows and calves traveling together and bulls forming smaller, separate bachelor groups. But during the rut, AKA their mating season, bulls break away from their bachelor groups and compete intensely to gather female mates into groups called harems.
Unlike most states, Montana’s elk share the landscape with high densities of apex predators. Their behavior, grazing habits, and migration patterns are heavily influenced by the constant presence of wolves, grizzly bears, and mountain lions. The best places to observe the intense fall rut and massive wintering herds are the Montana portions of Yellowstone National Park (specifically the Northern Range/Gardiner area), Glacier National Park, and the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
However for some, they can spot massive herds right in their own backyard.
A Montana woman by the name of Michelle Dralle 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:
