So I'm watching a science show on PBS the other night about ibex and red deer in the Austrian Alps and I learned something (wow imagine that, a tv program that you can actually learn something from!) that was very interesting. According to the show, during the harsh alpine winters, the red deer enter in to a metabolic transformation in which they lower their metabolism as much as 50% to cope with the lack of vegetation. Their lungs, heart, pulminary, and endocrine system slow down to conserve energy. If predators threaten them during this time, the deer can't quite kick into their "flight or fight" response as quickly and it is like they are running in their minds but their bodies are only trotting.
So it got me to thinking, maybe that is what happens to Elk during winter here in the Rockies too. My elk was hit 4 times but never even acted like one shot was fired. So I ran a search and sure enough, I found several studies done by graduate students in which this was noted in elk and deer in the west.
I have always kept my ear to the ground about wildlife biology before but I have never heard this until now. INteresting..........
