Well there’s something you don’t see every day ever. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that helicopters are falling from the sky at the hands of elk.

A cow elk knocked down a helicopter while its crew was capturing the animals for the state in eastern Wasatch County.

The Wasatch County Search and Rescue was called out to Current Creek in help the downed helicopter at 4:38 p.m on Monday.

I can see where re-evaluating the methods used to capture elk with nets from the sky as being a priority in Utah.

The two-person crew was in the process of capturing the elk with a net when the animal “somehow jumped up and hit the tail rotor of the chopper,” according to a Facebook post from the search and rescue crew.

“This almost severed the tail rotor,” the post continued, and the helicopter crashed. “Not something you see everyday, when an elk brings down a chopper.”

Oh great, the elk died and all we need are liberals crying out to get heli’s banned.

Neither crew-member was injured, aside from a few small cuts and bruises.
But the elk died, said Tonya Kieffer, the conservation outreach manager with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR).

OMFG is this real or an episode of Bullwinkle?  Wait, is Bullwinkle an elk or a moose? Nevermind, it doesn’t matter.

The crew had been capturing the elk for a DWR project that involves studying the animals’ migration.

“This has never happened before,” she said.

Well geez, I hope not Tonya Kieffer. If this had happened more than once I would be having MORE doubts about your Elk Capturing Committee.

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30 COMMENTS

  1. Damned Somali Elk taking out the tail rotor just like in “Blackhawk Down”! Better bring in some Hummers with .50 cals to assist the choppers. Sounds like a good Elk dinner any way you look at it!

      • Surely somebody ate the remains of the elk carcass. Simply wasteful not to recover the meat so somebody needing a decent meal gets a bargain out of the screw up.

        • “But seriously, how about a crocodile bringing down an airplane!”

          An alligator destroyed an airplane landing, the reptile was sunning itself right on the runway when it got hit.

          Cars hit ‘gators on ‘Alligator Alley’ (I-75 between Naples and Fort Lauderdale) fairly frequently…

      • I would have. Elk is delicious. Don’t get on me about eating other cervids being a cervid myself, because humans eat monkeys in some places too. >.>

  5. I think they will get a pass for any violent elk that was killed attacking a tail rotor. Shows how powerful Elk really are.

  6. The RMEF is too big!
    How many congresscritters accept money from this anti-helocopter group!
    It’s time to kick the RMEF out of Congress! Now!
    For the choppers!

  7. ‘We wuz shot down by a elk’ said no chopper crew ever. Til now.

  9. Hunting elk with helicopters is racist and transphobic. That elk identified as a bird and only wanted to fly like an eagle, like an eagle…..

  10. Cut and paste the Hughes 500 photo into the setting of a freeway, say somewhere in Texas, with elk splatter on one side and a SIG sticker on the other. Ask, What’s wrong with this photo.

  14. Hey diddle diddle, the cat & the fiddle,
    The elk jumped over the Hughes,
    The little dog laughed to see such sport,
    And the media ran away with the news.

  15. So far that’s five attacks on humans with human machinery that resulted in threee humans dead. The first was snake wrapped its tail in the trigger while being climbed by the gun, then the two murderous dogs, now this attempt by the elk. I’m beginning to wonder if these deer car collisions are more then just accidental. BANZAI

  16. Clearly they should stop letting Carl read nursery rhymes to the elk they capture.

    -Excerpt from the cockpit audio recorder recovered from the downed Hughes 500 pictured above-
    “Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle,
    The Cow jumped over the moo— oh my God no!!!! I didn’t mean actually ju -crashing sounds-”

    “Damn it Carl! We told you to shut the F*ck up!”

  17. Sounds like they weren’t looking at the possible outcomes when planning this little operation. Since elk are easily capable of clearing ten foot fences I wouldn’t take that multi-million dollar chopper under thirty or fourty feet while doing something like that. But then I don’t have a four year degree in game management so what the hell do I know.

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