Turf War? Swedish Pensioner Locks Horns With Angry Gang of Elk

Bernt Erlandsson from Västra Götaland County had to take arms to chase away an angry elk. He went out to pick up the morning newspaper when he was met by a gang of four elk behind the garage.

"Suddenly one of them charged against me. I was fortunate to have my stick with me, so that I could defend myself. I swept the elk right in the head," Bernt Erlandsson told local Swedish newspaper Skaraborgs Allehanda.

Erlandsson emerged from the skirmish with an injured thumb, but otherwise unscathed, while the horned intruders quickly fled the scene.

According to Erlandsson, the elk were afraid when they saw him in the garage and got hostile. By Erlandsson's own admission, there are a lot of elk in the vicinity of his home, but they tend not to be particularly violent.

"I've never been through anything like this. I have hunted elk for around 40 years and have been in the woods quite a lot, but I have never seen the elk behave so impertinent," a startled Bernt Erlandsson told Skaraborgs Allehanda.

Despite the elk's righteously peaceful reputation, elk-related incidents occur quite often across Sweden. In 2016, a woman in the Stockholm area was hospitalized after a violent encounter with an angry elk cow, which kicked her victim from behind. The same year, an angry elk attacked schoolchildren in Dalarna County during a break. Elk that attack people usually end up being put down.

Sweden, a sparsely-populated Nordic nation of 10 million, boasts an impressive population of around 300,000 elk, which increases to 400,000 in summertime, according to the Swedish Hunters Association. Each year, around 100,000 elk end up being shot by Swedish hunters. Hunting accounts for 93 percent of all elk deaths in Sweden, whereas other causes of death among the elk-kind include predators, diseases and traffic accidents by car and train.

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