I don't know about you, but I think it's time to get out and explore:
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Glacier National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park

Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
Between September and last week, park biologists aggressively hazed this elk 28 times to discourage it from approaching the road and visitors. They captured, sedated, tagged, and re-released it on site. This technique has proven to be much more successful than relocation because it causes the animal to associate the place and people with an unpleasant experience. The elk did not respond to attempts by biologists to change its behavior. The behavior that it learned from park visitors who had given it food had been too strongly ingrained.I think it's pretty obvious that Great Smoky Mountain officials did everything they could to keep this elk alive. Pointing the finger at the park in this incident is completely misdirected. Some have also placed blame on the photographer that sparred with the spike elk. From my point of view there's no evidence that he did anything to encourage the elk to "misbehave" - at least from the video footage that's been made public. The real question people should be asking is why no one came to the photographer's aid? There was at least one person in a car behind the photographer, as well as the videographer, that could've chased that elk away, or at least distracted him. That photographer was literally one second away from having an antler sever his jugular vein.
By initiating physical contact with a visitor, the elk displayed an unacceptable risk to human safety. After becoming food conditioned, the elk did not respond to any attempts to keep it out of the area and away from humans. When wildlife exhibits this behavior it often escalates to more aggressive behavior creating a dangerous situation for visitors.
"My first thoughts were "wow, he's getting pretty damn close here." But I've been up close before without incident. I hoped being still and passive would see him pass on. When he lowered his antlers to me, I wanted to keep my vitals protected and my head down. I felt that standing up would provoke him more and leave me more vulnerable to goring. I think that while protecting myself with my head down, having my head down was a signal that I was rutting with him. I was concerned at first, but when he started rearing back and lunging at me later on, I got scared and pissed off. That's when I wagged my finger at him to cut that shit out. I was relieved to see the Ranger coming."So the question that comes to mind: Why didn't anyone intervene? If you were there, would you've intervened to prevent this photographer from possibly becoming hurt?