Elk Walks Around With Dead Mountain Lion on Its Antlers

There’s a video making the rounds right now that looks like it was shot by someone who stumbled into being an extra in a deleted scene from Yellowstone: The Revenge.

In the clip, an elk is seen walking around with what appears to be the dead body of a mountain lion twisted up in its antlers. Not like a small piece of fur or anything. I mean full-on “this elk is wearing a cougar like a hat” levels of crazy. The video was not filmed in Montana, but appears to be somewhere like the National Elk Refuge. But with content like this, it’s still going to feel pretty familiar around these parts.

According to Outdoors.com, the video is going viral because nobody can figure out how a mountain lion would even end up stuck on an elk’s head in the first place.

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The Most Montana Thing in This Story Is the Predator Math

While it didn’t happen here, the conversation around it definitely is Montana. Predator and prey balance is something people argue about daily in this state, especially when wolves enter the chat. Wolves don’t just affect elk numbers. They affect everything. And now we’re seeing it with mountain lions too.

Read More: How Wolves Are Changing Cougar Behavior In Yellowstone

Mountain lions in the region have been changing their behavior, trying to avoid wolves, adjusting their hunting habits, and generally doing whatever they can to not get muscled off the food chain.

Translation: Wolves are out here reshaping the whole menu.

This Elk Might Have Been Battling for Its Life

We’ll never know for sure what happened in the video, but it’s not hard to imagine a mountain lion pouncing, getting tangled up, and the elk turning into a 700-pound panic machine with antlers. It's horrifying, but also kind of impressive.

And if Montana’s predator imbalance keeps shifting the way it has, don’t be shocked if something even stranger comes next. Like maybe an elk wearing wolf hats.