You don’t see that every day…
Generally, it’s the cow elk trying to fight off a predator to protect her young, not the other way around.
Especially in places like Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park… anywhere with high population of predators like bears, wolves, and mountain lions.
However here, in a rather rare turn of events, it’s mother goose on the defensive.
You don’t think of members of the deer family like elk, moose, deer, etc… eating meat, as they primarily graze, but they will rarely supplement their diet with meat when the opportunity strikes.
But to actively hunt? That’s almost unheard of…
Here we have a cow elk in what appears to be somewhere in Colorado, and she is aggressively hunting these baby geese.
The pair of mature geese, presumably the mother and father, do what they can to try and fight off the elk, with one even trying to distract the elk from the group of goslings, but to no avail.
This cow seems hellbent on getting some meat today, and unfortunately for mother goose, she prevails.
The account responsible for sharing, Good Bull Outdoors, detailed the wild encounter:
“A cow elk (female) hunts starlings and eventually geese in this very rare video. Despite the geese’s best efforts the elk kills and partially eats a baby goose (gosling) with the remaining 5 geese making it safely to the water.
This may be one of the only times elk have been videoed hunting and eating birds though ruminants like elk are well known to supplement their diet with birds, eggs, fish, and snakes.”
A straight-up predator elk.