Colorado’s Parks & Wildlife Department is celebrating after two officers were able to finally free an elk from the tire that had been trapped around his neck for years.
“I am just grateful to be able to work in a community that values [our] state’s wildlife resource,” Wildlife officer Dawson Swanson said in the department’s press release. Swanson, along with officer Scott Murdoch, tracked the elk down after a resident reported spotting the local celebrity near Pine Junction, an area to the southwest of Denver.
“We first learned of this elk with a tire around its neck in July 2019,” the Wildlife Department posted on Twitter, explaining that difficulties tracking, sedating, and freeing the elk had kept them unable to intervene.
We first learned of this elk with a tire around its neck in July 2019 when wildlife officer Jared Lamb saw it during a survey near Mount Evans. In this video, wildlife officer Scott Murdoch discusses the situation & what it would take to remove the tire.https://t.co/Frwi3kaXlc pic.twitter.com/xRrZ9nNChw
— CPW NE Region (@CPW_NE) August 14, 2020
At four and a half years old, the elk had spent nearly half his life with the tire trapped around his neck. Officers managed to sedate the 600-pound bull and cut into the tire as they began to free him.
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However, the tire’s steel frame meant that they would need to trim his antlers in order to get it off. The antlers will grow back in time but the elk is surely happy to be freed from the tire!
“It was not easy for sure, we had to move it just right to get it off because we weren’t able to cut the steel in the bead of the tire. Fortunately, the bull’s neck still had a little room to move. We would have preferred to cut the tire and leave the antlers for his rutting [breeding] activity, but the situation was dynamic and we had to just get the tire off in any way possible,” officer Murdoch explained in the press release.
The incident was the fourth time this week that officers had attempted to free the elk, and they succeeded through a combination of luck and preparedness. In another stroke of luck, the years that the elk had spent trapped with a tire around his neck hadn’t resulted in any permanent injuries — hair around the affected area had been rubbed thin, and he had a small cut, but he should bounce back in no time.
The team cut an excess of 35 pounds of debris and antler from the elk as they freed him. “The tire was full of wet pine needles and dirt,” Murdoch explained. “So the pine needles, dirt and other debris basically filled the entire bottom half of the tire. There was probably 10 pounds of debris in the tire.”
The incident highlights community responsibility toward wild animals, especially those that come into frequent contact with humans. Picking up trash and debris can not only help the local ecosystem but potentially prevent a nasty entanglement in the future. Learn more at the department’s Twitter page here and check out photos from the tire removal below:
This content was originally published here.