Wildlife officials in Colorado claim that an elusive elk who had been wandering the hills for at least two years while wearing a vehicle tire around his neck has finally been set free.
According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the 270 kg (600 lb), four-and-a-half-year-old male elk was tranquilized after being spotted ᴄʟᴏsᴇ to Pine Junction, southwest of Denver. It was the fourth time in the previous week that wildlife authorities had attempted to apprehend and assist him.
Because they couldn’t cut through the steel in the tyre’s bead, agency officers had to remove the object by cutting off the elk’s five-point antlers.
Officer Scott Murdoch said that they would have preferred to cut the tyre and leave the antlers for his rutting activities but the situation was dynamic and they had to just get the tyre off in any manner possible.
The removal of the tire, the antlers, and the debris within the tyre, according to the officer, allowed the elk to lose around 16 kg (35 lb) of weight.
While performing a population assessment for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and mountain goats in the Mount Evans Wilderness in July 2019, wildlife officers made their first sighting of the elk. Since then, he has been commuting back and forth between Park and Jefferson counties for the past few years.
