Roosevelt elk

SMOKING GUN

/ janpriddyoregon / 6 Comments

“Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em,” They told my dad when he was training in Arizona for WWII.

In January of 1964, the Surgeon General of the United States announced in print that tobacco smoke was dangerous to health. Cigarette caused lung cancer. The announcement was a political risk to the SG, and a blow to a valuable American industry, which had known of the danger for decades and kept that to itself. The warning was timed for a Saturday so that the stock market would have a couple of days before shivering, and to allow for Sunday newspapers to cover the story in detail. People read newspapers then.

The bull Roosevelt elk are sparring. The Roosevelt are the largest elk in the world, weighing up to 1200 pounds. Neither of these 4-point elk are likely to die or even suffer harm shoving one another across the sand. Twenty minutes after I took this photo, they were both grazing in a neighbor’s yard. It’s early in the season, their velvet is just dropping from their antlers, but in another month or so, local bull elk will not be safe to be around.
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