Biologists surprised at how healthy three-and-a-half legged elk appeared to be

Whether he’s still around or not, no one knows. But biologists are quite impressed with the shape of a three-and-a-half legged elk when it was captured on a video trailcam at the MPG Ranch near Missoula, Montana. “The cinematic quality of the scene, the hearty appearance of the bull, and the cleanliness of the complete sever just below this bull’s front left knee leaves us totally gobsmacked and wondrously puzzled,” the ranch wrote. The elk, which appeared to be at least five years old, was missing the lower half of its left front leg, right below the femur. It was hobbling and very keen to avoid putting any weight on its stump, but otherwise seemed surprisingly healthy despite its obvious handicap.

John Winnie Jr., an associate teaching professor in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University, reviewed the video and has his own speculations. What was immediately obvious to him was that the elk hadn’t been a tripod for very long. “When elk forage in deep snow, they paw snow out of their way with their front hooves to find grass,” he said. “Doing that when you’re missing a good chunk of a leg would be incredibly difficult. I can’t see him getting through a normal winter on three legs.” That would rule out the missing leg as a birth defect—it’s unlikely that an elk calf born with such a disadvantage would last long.

So what caused the elk to lose its leg? Craig Jourdonnais, a large game biologist working with the MPG Ranch, suggested the elk might have broken and lost the lower half of its leg running through a downfall of rock and other debris. Winnie agreed that was possible. Another explanation is that the elk might have been shot in the leg, which eventually caused enough decay for it to fall off. Winnie saw some similarities to injured animals he’s seen elsewhere in the world. “It looks similar to African wildlife that I’ve seen that have been caught in snares,” he said. “It’s pure speculation on my part, but it may have gotten caught in a snare, struggled to get out of it, and eventually the snare cut deep enough that the elk managed to rip itself out of it.” One explanation Winnie ruled out was that the elk lost its leg in an altercation with a predator. “I haven’t found any evidence of predators going for the lower legs,” he said.

What Winnie found remarkable wasn’t only that this bull elk survived such an incident, but that it appeared to be very healthy. “He was in really good condition coming out of the winter. If you just look at him, you can’t see a single rib, and his hips are barely starting to show. He came through in very good shape.” He recalled a necropsy he’d done on a bull elk that had survived for a prolonged period with a serious fracture to its left hind leg—the emaciated body showed how much of a toll the injury had taken. “His fat reserves were virtually completely depleted, and the bone marrow was a clear, red soup,” he said. “Marrow is the last reserve they’ll tap into, after subcutaneous and internal fat. If that’s depleted, an elk’s in pretty bad shape.”

Winnie believes breaking or losing a front leg could be even more detrimental than a back leg. Surviving in the short term would be difficult, but not impossible. He chalks that up to luck and circumstance rather than the resilience of that particular bull. “He probably hadn’t survived multiple winters like that, and that was probably a mild winter,” he said. “If you imagine that elk going through snow up to its belly, trying to do that on three legs would be really hard going. I don’t think he would have made it five years like that.”

Nobody at the MPG Ranch has seen the 3.5-legged elk since March 2024. Winnie believes the tripod elk lucked its way through a mild winter and found strength in numbers by hanging around with other bulls, as seen on the trailcam. How this bull wasn’t killed during the winter is anybody’s guess, but a hobbling elk would be an obvious target for any predator. “I think he’s really lucked out,” Winnie said. “He might have survived the winter, with difficulty, but his days were numbered with an injury like that.”