By Tim Binnall
Wildlife officials in Idaho could not believe their eyes when they stumbled upon a massive 'elk boneyard' containing the remains of at least 15 of the unfortunate creatures amassed at the base of a mountain. The gruesome discovery reportedly came about as a result of a program from the state's Fish and Game department wherein different wildlife species are outfitted with GPS radio collars in order to get a better understanding of their survivability in nature. When one of the creatures meets their demise, staff are alerted to a "mortality event" and venture out to the animal's location in order to investigate what happened. In this particular instance, what they wound up finding was the truly stuff of nightmares.
According to the department, earlier this year, they received a "mortality event" signal from the collar of an elk that they had been monitoring at the state's spacious Craig Mountain Wildlife Management Area. When workers arrived on the scene to find out what might have caused the creature's passing, they were stunned to see a horrifying collection of broken bones that once belonged to at least 15 elk. Scattered among the dead animals were "scree material and boulders up to the size of beach balls," which led wildlife workers to surmise that they had been killed in a sizeable landslide that swept the creatures up in a wave of snow and rocks that ultimately brought them down "almost 1,000 feet over just a distance of 300-400 yards."