I’ve got a feeling that elk got up after this nasty collision and thought something to the effect of “Who put that post right there?”
Elk are some of the most majestic animals on the planet. They are the second largest of the deer family (the moose beats them out in size), with cows weighing around 500 to 600 pounds and bulls tipping the scale somewhere between 700 to 1,100 pounds. Both genders typically stand around five foot tall at the shoulders.
The species is typically known to be very smart, especially when it comes to avoiding and outsmarting hunters and other prey. But the elk that we see in the video below might be the exception. In its effort to run away at top speed, it managed to make contact with a lone post sticking out of the ground.
A nearby driver turned on their camera (while they were driving… not necessarily the smartest move) as they watched an elk haul you-know-what alongside the road. They were likely sprinting at top speed, meaning they were clocking in at around 40 miles per hour. That’s pretty impressive speed, but not ideal if something gets in the way.
At first, it looked like the elk was comfortable navigating the snowy terrain. It even made a successful jump over something earlier in the video, though it was a little blurry, and thus hard to see (and hard to give the animal proper credit). Then, all of the sudden, the elk went airborne once more… and for a moment, it was like poetry in motion.
Then it smacked right into a post, and it was no longer majestic, as I described the overall species earlier.
I’m not sure if elk can experience embarrassment, but it was likely feeling a bit flustered after that high-speed contact. We don’t know exactly what happened afterwards, just because the driver kept going down the road while the elk started its recovery process. Though it did look like it popped back up afterwards, I’d bet the breath was knocked out of it after this:
“POV: You just watched an elk eat sh*t.”
That’s gonna hurt in the morning.
The tough thing about the animal kingdom is that, if something painful like that does happen, the wild animal just has to walk it off. There aren’t any painkillers or heating pads (or doctor’s visits) out in the wild. That elk will have to recover the old fashioned way: rub some dirt in it, and give it some time.
Social media users that stumbled across the video obviously felt bad for the elk… but also threw out a couple of “how did it not see that post coming” observations:
“The only fence post for miles and it runs directly into it.”
“Literally hit the only thing out there.”
“I really wonder what the thought process was there.”
“Survival instincts of a rock.”
” I just know that sh*t felt like getting pancaked by a 300 pound lineman.”
“And that’s how you know if someone installed the fence post correctly.”
That post was as sturdy as they come.
