Wolf or Elk

On September 24, Ag Information Network of the West reporter KayDee Gilkey, had a story wherein a six-year old horse, was found laying dead in his pasture with a torn open flank. That story has also been carried in several newspapers. The question was how the horse was killed. There was speculation that it was a victim of a wolf attack but others, ostensibly because of the wound pattern, thought the horse might have been attacked and killed by a bull elk. I reached out to one of the most knowledgeable outdoorsmen that I know, Mark Werner, owner of BCguideoutfitters up in British Columbia. ”Hey I've got quite a story for you. Last week near Imnaha, Oregon Lefty, a six-year old horse, was found laying dead in his pasture with a torn open flank. He was found by a neighbor of Eric Porter’s whose ranch the horse was on. It’s got a heck of a puncture wound right in the face and then one in the flank and then there was another one up around the neck area. There is probably about 20 feet of guts laying there in the field where whoever grabbed it in the stomach got some guts. To your knowledge, is it possible that a bull elk attacked the horse? No. I would never think it was a bull elk because a bull is only aggressive towards another bull that has the same scent, posturing and calling and all those kinds of things. No it wasn’t an elk, it had to be wolves.”