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If you have ever wondered how those bull elk with their huge antlers navigate through the dense woods in the mountains where they live here’s a small example. The antlers on these big boys can grow to some truly incredible sizes, spanning 48 inches or more and growing to a length of four feet. They can weigh as much as 40 pounds. Imagine walking around with a 40 pound bag of dog food on your head and you get an idea as to why these guys tend to get grumpy in the fall. Well, we know there are other reasons too, but this has got to be right up there.

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Taking a look at this thicket of dense shrubs, small trees, larger trees, deadfalls, snags and everything else that makes up prime elk habitat, you wonder why would he even want to go in there.

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But there is no way to tell what is going on in an animal’s mind and we can only watch and wonder.

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The grass being greener in the middle of the woods he starts into the stand of trees, slowly moving forward with his head down, so preoccupied with getting as much of that new fresh grass in his stomach that he soon finds his antlers under a deadfall.

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I neglected to mention that those antlers are covered in a soft downy velvet that has a blood flow just under the surface to maintain the growing process and are very sensitive. These fellows takes a great deal of care not to bang into things or damage those antlers in any way. Now if that were one of us with our 40 pound bag of dog food strapped to our head but having it sticking out two feet on either side and connected to our central nervous system we would be ‘freaking out’.  Not this guy though, he knows to a millimeter where the ends of those antlers are and he slowly but carefully maneuvers them down and around that snag without the slightest hesitation. His neck muscles have to be incredibly strong to be able to constantly control the tilt and angle of that heavy load day in and day out until he drops them in mid-winter.

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Having conquered that little obstacle he heads off into the dense forest. If you watch elk at all you will often see them running through terrain like this. They will tip their antlers back laying them along their flanks and just bust through those trees. Of course they usually do that when the velvet is off and the antlers have hardened to the point where they can withstand everything a bull elk does, from digging into the ground to throw clumps of grass and debris into the air to show how tough he is, to actually proving it by smashing into another bull his size, crashing their antlers together, hoping to vanquish his foe and thereby capture the ladies.