The Fight

OK, here are the promised elk fight pictures from Benezette, Elk County, Pa. taken back in early October during the elk rut. The scenario was that Bradley and I had snuck our way near this group of elk that included about 4 or 5 cows and calves, these two satellite bulls, the herd bull and another bull or two that passed by (or nearby). We never invaded their space, but instead, kept to the outskirts of where they were. From the time we started taking pictures of the cow and calf I posted earlier until we left the area we never moved more than 15 to 20 yards. These two raghorns sparred from time to time all morning. Occasionally these sparring matches would go for a couple of minutes. (see first picture) At one point the herd bull tired of them screwing around and ran over to break it up. They scattered before he could make his point. Then they would, again, hook up and start sparring. At some point something happened that this turned into a fight. A fight that lasted 9 minutes according to my pictures of the event. Notice in pictures 6 and 7 how the fighting looks more intense. See the hunched backs in picture 6. Finally the bull on the left turned and ran a bit then pranced around like he wanted more. Picture 8 shows that they quickly made up to each other and started sparring again. The video is 48 seconds long and is really grainy (caused by optical zooming a point and shoot camera. All it does is make the pixels bigger.) The loud noises you hear half way through is noise made when I shifted the camera when I had it setting on top of my big camera for stability. (So, to answer any questions before they are asked, it wasn't Bradley that time)