The day an elk was abducted by aliens in Washington State

It's no secret that Washington State has a "thing" for UFOs. Our state is one of the top hotspots for UFO sightings, and the term "flying saucer" was coined in a UFO incident near Rainier.  While it's not uncommon to see news of UFO/UAP sightings, this incident from 1999 is definitely unusual.

The Elk Abduction Incident

• When: February 25, 1999, around noon
• Where: West of Mount St. Helens.
• Who: Forestry workers: 14 present, 3 sighted the craft.
• What: One craft; one visible abduction of an elk cow.

What happened during the Elk Abduction?

According to a report from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), on Thursday, February 25, 1999, fourteen forestry workers were working on a site west of Mount St. Helens when "an elk was lifted off the ground and carried away by a very peculiar, disc-shaped object."

Peter B. Davenport, Director of NUFORC, and Robert A. Fairfax, Director of Investigations for the Washington State Chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, proceeded to investigate the case about a week afterward. According to their report, an unusual object (mistaken as a parachute, initially) moved slowly toward a herd of elk. The elk eventually bolted, but one elk cow went in a different direction than the herd.

Next, the object moved quickly after this lone elk, and lifted it off the ground with "no visible means of support." The object continued to travel with an increased wobble as the elk appeared to ascend toward it in a slow rotation. The object moved up a slope east, then west, then returned east again and began to ascend at a steep angle until it "simply disappeared from sight of the witnesses." At some point, the elk also became undetectable by the observers' eyes.

What did the craft look like?

The initial report of the incident indicated that the flying object was "like the heel of a man's shoe," with two panels - one red and one white - on top. In a follow-up investigation, some additional descriptions of this craft were found.

• The width ("wing span") was approximately 7-8 feet; length was approximately 5-6 feet, and depth was approximately 14-18 inches.
• The red (dull) was on the right side of the craft, and the white (reflective) on the left. The rest of the craft was gray, with no indication that it was metallic.
• The wobble was about 2 to 2 1/2 seconds long, and was similar to a "spinning coin as it is winding down."

Did the elk 'return' to Earth?

A later report from NUFORC in FATE magazine mentioned that one of the forestry workers claimed to have found a dead elk cow that they believed might have been the abductee.

The day after the sighting, an employee of the land company happened upon a dead adult female elk lying beside a logging road, approximately one to two miles north of the workers' location at the time of the sighting.

. . . peculiarly, it had not been predated by foxes or coyotes even a week after its discovery. This fact was confirmed by Fairfax and myself when we examined the carcass-—that of a well fed, well-muscled, and otherwise uninjured adult female elk—on March 5, eight days after the abduction incident. Dead, fully engorged ticks were still embedded in the animal's flesh. This is unusual, according to entomologists, given that a tick will usually detach itself from a dead animal as the temperature of the carcass drops.

Was this incident real?

Without outright discounting the witness accounts, there are several issues that can call this incident into question.

First, the investigators struggled to get a clear account from witnesses. All of the forestry workers spoke very minimal English, and had to rely on a single person to act as translator. There was also tension among the group when interviewed, suggesting that some people may not have answered truthfully due to social pressure from their co-workers, many of whom were skeptical of the incident.

Second, the dead elk found later is questionable as evidence. There are many reasons scavengers may not have touched the corpse, and it also could have been planted. A thorough reading of the investigation reports also doesn't indicate any inspection of the area in which the craft supposedly collided with the wild brush.

Third, there is no photographic, film, or other physical evidence of the incident or its aftermath. While a few photos from the investigators report exist, they do not show detail of the area where the craft had been, or the mysterious elk, and of course, none of the workers captured any evidence themselves. While it's understandable that in 1999, these workers would not have hand held capability of recording the incident, the investigators seemed to lack any firm evidence other than "it happened here" photographs.

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