Elk skull

I bet the hunter was pleased with himself. Looking at the position of the bullet hole I reckon the animal was already down on the ground when the fatal shot was fired.

I'll be he was grazing.

An interesting series of Elk remains Diane - not the sort of thing we're likely to see in the UK.

Lol - no, I doubt it! Thanks, Keith.

another Second Amendment advocate ?

Almost certainly. But, hunting is a legitimate use of a rifle. They do not need military-style guns for this, in fact it is illegal to hunt with them. Owners of that kind of weapon just cry about the right to own them and a large majority of Americans want to place restrictions on those. But, our representatives are too cowardly to ban them - again. Actually, they were banned until that law expired during George W. Bush's administration. Republicans refused to renew the law, so that is how it stands.

Maybe the Gun merchants control the purse strings for the Senate !!!

You just find such things in your environment?
In the thumbnail it looked to me like a sandtrooper from "Star Wars". ;-)

Yes we do, though not very commonly. The elk would have been "field dressed" and the meat & antlers taken home.* The rest is left for bears, wolves and coyotes to clean up. An entire elk is way too heavy to carry home. Deer are carried in the back of a hunter's truck - like my dad used to do. A pack of wolves traverses the area pictured, moving back and forth between Oregon and California. So, there are also skeletal remans left by animal predators, too.

*Antlers are proof to a game warden that it was a male elk and of a certain age - in case one should stop the hunter in the woods or on the way home.

Poor elk !

Well, that's how I feel, too, but there is a lot of game here and it's eaten by a hunter's family, not just left on the ground.

bonjour Diane. Il y a quelques années, je cherchais des champignons lorsque j'ai trouvé un magnifique bois de cerf. ( un seul, pas deux ) je l'ai emmené avec moi. J'avais trés peur, je craignais que si quelqu'un me voyait on me prendrait pour un braconnier.. En fait je ne savais pas que les cerfs perdent naturellement leurs bois a une certaine période.(Il est toujours là prés de moi) Tous les chasseurs ne sont pas des prédateurs mais il y en a aussi et partout C'est vrai que chez vous le problême est majoré par l'utilisation peu ou non controlées de certains calibres et armes militaires. Vu d'ici, ça parait parfois surréaliste. Amitié. Jean paul