Parents Violate Park’s Guidelines and Let Their Child Feed a Wild Elk — and Soon Learned Their Lesson

Each year, in September, tourists flock to the Rocky Mountains National Park to witness the elk's official mating season. Being one of the largest habitats for elk, Rocky National Park erupts with screams and mews as the bull elk drop their velvety antlers to attract cow elk to mate with. However, the mating season causes these animals to turn highly aggressive, a trait they need to display dominance to lure their females. The park is dotted with signs warning visitors not to come too close to these wild animals. But oftentimes people tend to ignore the signs, like in this resurfaced footage shared by Touronsofnationalparks (@touronsofnationalparks).

The scene was filmed in a meadow at the Rocky Mountains National Park during the elk’s fall mating season in 2024. The footage shows a group of visitors standing close to an elk, trying to feed it. Far on the roadside, other visitors are walking around. Some of them are riding on horseback. Among the group is a man in a jacket and shorts squatting down on the road to snap some cool wildlife photos with his camera. Just then, a boy in a yellow shirt approaches the elk to feed it with his hands.

The camera pans around to show the elk staring at the little human. Soon enough, more and more visitors gather at the scene to capture the rare feeding encounter in their cameras and smartphones. As the boy extends his palms towards the animal, the animal grabs the food into its mouth, also latching onto the boy’s fingers, pecking a bite. “Oww!” the boy can be heard exclaiming in the footage. The original video was recorded by a distant observer named Sebastian Stonum (@sebastianstonum), who captioned it as, “Watch this kid get his fingers bit!”

Viewers reflected that the encounter didn’t just teach the visitors at the scene to stay away from these wild animals; it also taught the boy’s parents to follow the park’s guidelines, always, if they intend to keep their child safe. Elks, at this time of the year, can be wild and dangerous, and humans can easily get gored and trampled, as Erik Stensland explains in a video. Clipping some suggestions offered by NPS, he urged the park’s visitors to keep “at least two bus lengths” of distance that is comfortable to the elk and not disturb them.

Never surround them, and if you spot one moving in a particular direction, keep the area open for it to walk through. “Bull elk are very aggressive during this time of year. For the protection and safety of both elk and park visitors, annual meadow closures are in effect throughout Rocky Mountain National Park,” the park writes on Instagram. Instead of thinking “how close can I get to the elk?” a visitor should think “How far should I stay back?” if they really want to enjoy the rare sight of an “elk rut.”

The park remains closed during the mornings and the evenings when it's time for the animals to mate. So, the visitors will need to watch them during this duration, and that too from the roadside. Park’s website recommends visitors to bring binoculars and park their car in one of the pull-overs, not in the vegetation. The park also suggests that they turn off the car’s lights, shut the doors, and keep the voices to a minimum so they don’t disturb these animals while they’re grazing around. The moral of the story: Keeping distance from wildlife is the key to happiness.