Arizona woman dies in encounter with elk

PINE LAKE—The Arizona Department of Game & Fish announced Tuesday a woman in Northern Arizona had apparently been killed by an elk.

Officials believe she was attempting to feed wildlife. It is the first reported death attributed to an elk in Arizona.

The woman died eight days after allegedly being trampled by an elk on her property in the Pine Lake community, 15 miles from Kingman. It is an unincorporated area in the Hualapai Mountains.

The woman’s husband had returned to the home Oct. 26 after a trip into Kingman and found her around 6 p.m. on the ground in the backyard “with injuries consistent with being trampled by an elk,” AZGFD reported. He described seeing a bucket of spilled corn nearby, but there were no witnesses to what happened.

The woman was transported to the Kingman Regional Medical Center and then to Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada. That is where she died Nov. 3. The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office determined the death was an accident.

A Game & Fish officer visiting the property and speaking with the husband noted several elk tracks in the yard.

Department staff have distributed door hangers around the community warning against approaching or feeding elk.

Game & Fish says there have been five reported cases of people being hurt by elk in the past five years in Arizona. That is attributed to elk being “habituated to humans,” often due to people feeding them.

An average bull elk weighs 900 pounds. There are an estimated 35,000 elk in Arizona.