2 men survive collision with elk

The Daily Inter Lake

Two men suffered minor injuries after their car hit an elk on Montana 206 Friday morning.

The men's Ford Focus was northbound on Montana 206 near Yeoman Hall Road at about 7:15 a.m. when it crested a hill and slammed into the bull elk.

The elk flipped onto the hood and continued over the top of the car, peeling back the roof like a tin can, said Montana Highway Patrol trooper Evan Schneider.

The driver, a 49-year-old man from North Carolina, was knocked unconscious by the impact. His passenger, a 50-year-old man, was temporarily dazed.

The car, with the driver's foot still on the gas, drifted across the southbound lane of traffic and into the ditch before the passenger fully regained his senses. He was then able to reach across the still unconscious driver, steer the car back onto the road, and throw the transmission into neutral.

The car finally coasted to a stop almost a mile from where the collision occurred.

The driver remembers cresting the hill and dimming his headlights as a vehicle approached from the opposite direction, but nothing else until he regained consciousness while sitting in his wrecked car on the side of the highway, said Schneider.

Both men were taken to the hospital, where they were coherent and talking.

The pair were lucky the elk went over the car instead of entering the passenger compartment and crushing them, said Schneider.

"It could have been a lot worse," he said. "It was pretty remarkable what happened."

Drivers who stopped to help estimated the elk, which was killed in the collision, weighed about 1,000 pounds.