Dead in her tracks?

[Coastal_native]

I had a pretty interesting weekend.  I was out scouting for elk almost every night last week trying to find some elk in preparation for taking my brother out to try to help him fill his tag.  I finally got into a herd Thursday night that had 4 branch bulls chasing each other around waiting for the last few unbred cows to come back into estrus (two of them were dandies and not too friendly with each other).  I'd spooked them a little bit on my way out that night, so Friday night I went back out to make sure they'd still be there for us Saturday morning. 

After walking about a 1/3 mile down a decomissioned road system, I found where they had came out on the road and milled around for awhile.  To my surprise I walked right up on dead cow laying on the road.  It had died probably the night before as I could see all the fresh tracks from the herd around it.  I did a pretty thorough inspection of the body and couldn't find any bullet holes or scratches.  It had a little blood dripping out of the nostrils and a bad case of diarrhea, but that was it.  I called my buddy who is a wildlife bio for our tribe and he came out and performed a necropsy on it and took some tissue samples from some of the organs.  He skinned it out from nose to tail and couldn't find any bullets holes, bruising, or obvious trauma.  Pretty rare to find a seemingly "natural" mortality so fresh...chances are I seen that cow on the hoof the night before. 

As you can see from the pic, it looked as if the cow fell over and kicked it's hooves a few times to try to get up...and then expired.  It was a little stiff, but didn't have any bad smell, hair slip, or sunken eyes.  I'm pretty confident no one had been in that area for the last two weeks.  I'll post the results if anything interesting comes back from the lab.

As for the hunting...I found the elk again Friday night after dealing with the cow incident and then watched my brother blow about 3 different shot opportunities Saturday.  I forget sometimes how much longer it takes to get comfortable with a shot when you're still learning how to hunt.

[cle elum bowhunter]

No trauma to the body anywhere when she was skinned out?  That black tarry stool looks like internal bleeding.  Any chance she was struck by a vehicle somewhere in the area and then died from the internal hemoraging at that location?  If not, then I would have to go with the Hollywood answer and say something like Eboli.  Will be interesting to see what the Necro report indicates.

[STIKNSTRINGBOW]

Maybe one of those Bulls got a little too rough with her ? 

[Hornseeker]

Thats Wierd!!! IF there was no obvious bruising after it being skinned, you could throw out the vehicle collision.. hmmm... Over here in MT the whitetail died like that this summer, blood out nose/mouth... no trauma, it was from EHD/Blue Tongue...

Wierd.

[bucklucky]

Interesting.

[quadrafire]

Maybe one of those Bulls got a little too rough with her ? 

maybe a head injury from those frisky bulls fighting??  That is wierd though. Don't think I would eat it just in case

[runamuk]

Wonder if her lungs blew up.....happens in horses sometimes they run too hard then their lungs literally blow apart they bleed out their nose and fall over dead 

will be interesting to hear the necropsy resluts

[Recurve-Elk]

that's a bummer right there!  Hopefully it isn't some kind of disease.

[pianoman9701]

Animals do die of natural causes. Cancer, lung infections, all kinds of stuff that we die from, too. It is odd to find in the wild, though. Usually, by the time we see one, it's all just bones.

[Special T]

i'd just like to find out the report results... thanks Coastal, interesting read.

[colockumelk]

Interesting read. Tba.is Coastal keep us updated.

[PlateauNDN]

That's very interesting indeed and can't wait to hear the results.

[dreamunelk]

Most plausible would be an injury sustained from rutting activity.  However, necropsy would have shown the trauma.  The dark specs  on her make me wonder if she had a parasite load(tics?).  Was this checked?  If so it would indicate that her immune system was stressed.  What did the bone marrow look like in the femur?  A little early for clostridium spp.  but, I would not rule out.  What did the kidney look like?
Could be anything.  Sometime animals die for no apparent reason.  This does happen more than people realize. 

[colockumelk]

Dr. House could find out.

[724wd]

i'd guess the black spots are flies.  they don't waste any time when something dead hits the ground