YELLOWSTONE'S WILD WORLD

Yesterday we left our trailer for Yellowstone with a specific goal: We wanted to film fall foliage between Cooke City and Beartooth Pass. There are a lot of pretty aspens there this time of year. But we never made it out of the park. Some of our very best days in Yellowstone happen when we never reach our goal because we keep finding other neat things along the way.
One of the first things we found was a bull elk at China Gardens along the Gardner River. It was Broken Nose. Broken Nose is a nice, big bull elk. They call him Broken Nose because he broke his 2 years ago when he was a 4 point. During the rut that year he got mad at a bus and rammed it so hard he broke his nose, broke off his antlers, and was knocked unconscious. He laid there so long a lot of people thought he was dead but he eventually got up and wandered off in a daze. This year he has been hanging out between Gardiner and Mammoth. When we saw him a week ago he had at least 20 girl friends. Someone must have stolen them because he has been by himself for the last 2 days.

After we filmed Broken Nose we went up to Mammoth and turned left towards Cooke City. We got as far as the old photography store and found a crowd had gathered. We finally saw what they were looking at. A bull elk down in the grass in front of one of the houses near the superintendent’s house with 2 rangers standing over him. I knew it wasn’t Touchdown because his antlers weren’t big enough but I was really upset because I thought he was dead. Then some of the people in the crowd filled us in. The elk had somehow managed to get a climbing rope wrapped around his antlers. They had tranquilized him and had already cut the rope off but my friend, Connie, got a picture before they tranquilized him. If I hadn’t seen how wrapped around and around that rope was I would have never believed it.

You will notice in the above photo the ranger is holding up the elk’s antlers. If they left the elk on his side he could die from the build up of gas in his digestive system so they put him a more upright position

While the rangers waited a woman came out of the house to see what was going on and took a photo of the elk in her front yard. I guess when you live in Mammoth you get used to this type of thing.

After about 30 minutes the rangers gave the elk a drug to reverse the effects of the tranquilizer.

You could tell by the way the rangers were positioned they knew the drug would have an immediate effect and they moved out of the way quickly. The elk got up but almost as immediately he was down again.

He finally got up but was very wobbly on his feet. The rangers kept an eye on him for a while to make sure he is OK.

A Side Note: Notice the orange tag in his right ear. There are actually 2 tags. One is his new ID number. The other has the date he was tranquilized so hunters will know not to eat the meat of this elk if he wanders out of the park. If I was an elk I would be standing in line to get my ear tag so the hunters wouldn’t shoot me.

I will start a sale with all of our photos 25% off Tuesday at www.vernelehnberg.com. You will need a password. Look here tomorrow night after I get the password set up.