After a video of an elk head-butting a photographer went viral, officials at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Asheville, N.C. decided to euthanized the animal which they said had been causing problems beforehand, USA Today reports.
Park officials told the Asheville Citizen-Times that the elk had been eating people food regularly and was thus a "problem," while according to spokeswoman Dana Soehn, the video of the head-butting "was the first incident that we know of that the elk engaged in physical contact" with a visitor, and was "a critical step in the decision-making" on whether or not to euthanize the animal.
"This was not a one-time incident," she said. "[The video] was a trigger; the physical contact escalated our decision."
Shot on Oct. 20 by fellow visitor Vince Camiolo along the park's Cataloochee Trail, the footage shows a male elk head-butting visitor James York, who was sitting by himself and taking still photographs when the animal approached him and head-butted at him for seven minutes.
"Definitely got pretty nervous for the photographer - pretty quickly," Camiolo said to the local newspaper. "I was following the lead of the other photographers who were there because I thought they were experienced, maybe this was common?"
Neither York nor the elk were hurt, and York told the Asheville Citizen-Times that he was "truly saddened" by the park's decision to put the elk down.
"I was really looking forward to watching him grow up," he said. "I felt like I bonded with him. I am crushed that he's gone. I was looking forward to his rack getting bigger and maturing into a bull."
Park officials tried "hazing" the elk, or re-training him to associate people with loud, scary noises instead of food using bean bug guns and firecrackers, and even darted and moved him, but he "came back to that same spot" and was thus deemed a hazard that could result in human injury or death. They noted that while Park did almost everything correctly after being approached by the animal, he should have walked away slowly immediately when the elk approached him.
"Because I'm standing up, I couldn't be able to protect myself as easily as I could, down on the ground by curling up into a ball," York told the Citizen-Times. "He just kind of looked up at me. I just paused and waited for him to move on, but he decided to take more interest in me."
Park rangers note that by fall breeding seasons, dominant bull elk tend to defend their territory (known as their rut) by charging and sparring with competitor males.
"Unfortunately, this 800-pound elk charged several visitors," the park said in a statement. "Now that the rut is essentially over, the elk's aggressive behavior should lessen and by removing the elk's antlers which are annually shed, biologists further reduced the risk for harm to visitors."
Click here to see a photo of the elk head-butting at photographer James York, who was sitting in a designated "safe spot" at the park when the bull approached him.
