Beef between bull elk doesn’t end when the sun goes down.
Right now, we’re smack dab in the middle of peak antler clashing. Any guess why? If you were thinking “It must be rut season,'” you hit the nail right on the head. Bull elk become more aggressive and vocal from September to November. They start “acting up” during that period of time to establish dominance, claim territories, and in hopes of securing a female mate.
And as you’ll see in this video out of Estes Park, Colorado, bull elk battle night and day.
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, and one of the more popular places they visit is Estes Park, Colorado.
The town acts as somewhat of a base for the Rocky Mountain National Park, and always has elk moving through and around the city limits. Herds occasionally take over Estes Park, and the humans that call the town home are often witnesses to elk-on-elk encounters… like this night-time feud that was captured on camera.
An account called Good Bull Guided (a great follow on social media, if I do say so myself) captured and then shared the footage, and it shows two sizable bulls in a bit of a stalemate. Both elk in the fight appear to be very mature, and they weren’t afraid to utilize their towering racks to fend one another off.
When lights were pointed towards them, it only seemed to elevate the aggression between the two wild animals. The person who posted the video says that, on the night they captured this footage, there was all kinds of elk activity happening in the area.
They just so happened to follow the sound (the wildlife photographers were apparently having a steak dinner when they abandoned their meal to chase the clanking of antlers) and got a front row seat to this impressive tilt:
“Crazy doesn’t really describe the evening. A big 6×7 bugling while swimming across the lake, a 15 minute long fight, a second fight in a place we could hear but not see, a bull repeatedly walking down the road trying to get to cows inside the fairgrounds, a gunshot coming from the road which we found out was a policeman shooting a wounded elk calf hit by a car, and another bull jumping out towards our truck and nearly hitting it as he ran by. What a night!”
Certainly sounds like a thrilling evening in Estes Park, Colorado… and I’m guessing this fight they got on camera was the 15-minute one that was mentioned.
That makes sense too. These fully-grown elk (standing 4 to 5 feet tall and weighing between 700 and 1,100 pounds) were evenly matched, and their after-dark feud appeared to be playing out like two heavyweights strategically trading shots. Just goes to show that the action in the animal kingdom isn’t reserved for a certain time of the day.
Dark or light, dawn or dusk… bulls will battle, and that’s especially true during the rut.
