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A RIFF on what makes the great outdoors…great.

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This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime encounters and it really doesn’t get any better than this.

These encounters are amazing. The teach hunters a lot when you get this close to an animal. It shows how being still, having control of your scent and proper camouflage for certain species will work just as planned.

Elk are one massive animal and a favorite in the hunting community. Widely renowned as the best wild game to eat out there. They weigh in up to 1,000-pounds and have some of the coolest antlers out there that can be up to 6-feet long.

Their bugle during the rut calling to females is one of the coolest sounds you can hear in the woods.

But, throw all these things together and its not exactly an animal you want to come face-to-face with. There’s definitely potential for something bad to happen. And most of the time, it’s just not that easy to get close to one.

This video shows the calmness of a hunter in one of these wild situations.

A bull elk approaches a man sitting for a bow hunt. Decked out in camouflage being as quiet as possible with little to no movements, the elk doesn’t really notice him.

It walks right up next to him but can tell that something is up.

The elk can smell him slightly so he comes in close for a sniff of the weird tree sitting there. As he sniffs the man’s arm, it scares the elk because he didn’t realize he was that close to something like a human.

The elk is scared enough to run off as quick as he can, but lucky for him, it seems like this hunter wasn’t looking for elk.

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Talk about something you don’t see in my part of the country.

Growing up in South Carolina, I can honestly say I’ve never seen an elk in my 23-years of living. Not one time…

They’re indigenous in North Carolina, but by the 1800s the number of elk in the state was virtually zero. They have since been reintroduced, and right now, an estimated 150-200 elk reside in the state.

But still, they’re pretty hard to find…

I imagine that growing up in a part of the world where you just casually see elk chilling on the side of the road, just minding their own business, the sight of elk my not give you pause, but for most of us, we’re gonna stop and take pictures.

This video comes from Yellowstone National Park, a place where folks travel from thousands of miles away to see elk. Although sometimes, you get a little more than you bargained for.

This group stumbles upon a magnificent creature who lets out a bugle and then proceeds to stand up, and start… PEEING on himself.

The ol’ Elk had been sipping the horny juice, as rutting bulls can sometimes piss on themselves in order to douse themselves in their scent and attract females.

My guy was just getting ready for mating season, and all of these onlookers were getting in the way. Thankfully we had the park ranger hilariously screaming at people to move along.

“Shot at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. The ranger soundtrack is great.”

You gotta love Yellowstone though, where else will an elk pissing on his own face cause a traffic jam.

A post shared by RIFF Outdoors (@riffoutdoors)

Never a dull moment in Yellowstone National Park.

Or Yellowstone the show, but that’s another story…

Spanning across Wyoming, Montana and into Idaho, Yellowstone National Park is home to some of the most incredible wildlife you’ll find anywhere in the United States. We’re talking bears, wolves, elk, deer, bison, pronghorn, as well as a ton of fish, birds, and reptiles.

Established in 1872, it’s the first national park in the United States and widely accepted as the first national park in the world. Some will argue however that Bogd Khan Uul National Park in Mongolia is the oldest.

Oldest or not, if it’s not on your bucket list, you need to put it on there ASAP. No matter when you’re there, you’re pretty much guaranteed to see something incredible.

Whether it’s a bison stampede, a bear chasing an elk, a pack of wolves hunting… the place is just crawling with breathtaking wildlife experiences.

And sometimes, you don’t even have to be looking for it.

Matt Fluke of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was looking for a place to picnic with his family when the car behind him got smoked by an elk. Boom, right into the side of their SUV.

Of course there is nothing special about hitting an elk with your car, just about anybody that’s every heard a country song has a deer a time or two. But this elk wasn’t just crossing the road, it was running for its life.

Yep, right after it slammed into the car and knocked itself out, a black wolf emerged from the trees, just seconds behind it.

“I didn’t look at my dashcam video until I got back to where we were staying at. Originally I thought it happened behind that car. We pulled over for a second and saw the elk on the road and the wolf with it.”

Naturally, they pulled over to watch nature take its course.

Wanna catch an elk? Just chase it into a moving car… chase is over.

“There was a turn out real close and lots of other cars stopping around there. You could see it from where we were at and the car that was behind me pulled over and then pulled out and went down the road… it was wild.”

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And speaking of Yellowstone, be sure to check out our Yellowstone The Soundtrack Playlist, featuring every song from every episode, all the way through Season 3.

At least he probably got some good pictures out of the whole ordeal…

It’s hard to imagine what you’d do if you found yourself in a predicament like this. A young, aggressive bull elk, has you pinned on the ground, and his two small, but sharp, antlers are just waiting to rip through your neck.

Here, the man stayed incredibly calm which would be nearly impossible to do.

Most people would get up and run for the hills, but that’s usually a mistake when it comes to aggressive wildlife. You run, they chase you, you die… it can go bad.

Staying as calm as possible is usually the right move in these situations, but you should still try to get away from the animal as quickly as possible.

Even though this elk is young, and perhaps even being a bit playful, it could have seriously injured this man. It could have gored him, stomped him out, or just ran him right over.

The video starts with the young bull elk with his forehead pressed up against the mans hear as he sits crisscross applesauce on the ground.

The man keeps his head down as the elk keeps ramming his head into him, and the whole time you’re just waiting for one of those antlers to cut into him.

This continues on and the man stays put as the elk even stabs at him a few times.

The elk circles around to his backside and the man flips around to see him coming. The elk starts to get a little more aggressive and the man pushes his antlers off a few times.

The wild part is when it backs off for a second and the man starts snapping photos.

This is where I really think he is a little dumb… this animal is fairly aggressive and he is still calm enough to take photos. It makes a person wonder if he does understand the danger.

It keeps ramming the man and eventually he gets up and backs up as a car comes in closer. He hops in the vehicle and the elk starts sniffing all his gear. The elk digs through it and they honk at it to scare it off.

Sadly, they ended up in the euthanizing of the Elk according to Gatlinburg Tn Guide.

The elk continued to show signs of aggression and the only real option was to put it down with there being so many people going through the area.

The sad part is that it’s all the fault of humans. And really, if this photographer had of backed away and not brought so much attention to the elk it probably would have made out fine.

“The elk had been coming back to that area in search of food, and had begun associating humans with food… it could not be re-trained to be fearful of humans.”

If we let the animals be wild, and enjoy from afar, the risks are much lower and better for nature in general.

That’s what these parks are for, it’s not a zoo, the animals are not interactive. When they get used to humans it really never results in much good, not for the tourists, and not for the animals.

Nevertheless, what a wild encounter.