Wayward Caribou Meets Untimely Death
October 18, 2006
Photo courtesy of Greeley Tribune
A caribou was struck and killed by a car in Colorado about 2000 miles from it’s normal habitat. Officials’ are puzzled as to how it got into the state and they have no records of any being kept on any farms in the state.
Caribou killed in La Salle
Mike Peters, (Bio) mpeters@greeleytribune.com
October 18, 2006

Hours before a snowstorm hit northern Colorado on Tuesday, an animal that is normally found in snowier climes about 2,000 miles to the north appeared in the middle of Weld County.State employee Gene Fisher was driving on U.S. 85 just south of La Salle when he saw the strange animal. “It was a caribou,” Fisher said later, but as he watched it grazing beside the highway, tragedy struck.
A passing train and its whistle startled the caribou, and it ran onto the highway and into the path of a car. The caribou was killed upon impact, and the driver of the car stopped.
“He got out, looked at his car, saw me and just jumped back in and took off,” Fisher said of the driver.
The caribou — a buck — had a large rack of antlers. Colorado State Trooper Shannon Straley said he counted 45 points on the antlers. They estimated the animal weighed about 350 pounds.
Fisher, the Colorado Department of Transportation employee who witnessed the accident, called the state patrol to report it. Trooper Straley: “I got the call, and the dispatcher said a car hit a caribou, and I said, ‘A what?’”
The men loaded the large caribou into the back of a transportation department truck and drove it to the offices in Evans. A bow hunter, Fisher immediately recognized the animal as a caribou. At the transportation department offices, he met with Division of Wildlife manager Chad Morgan.
“We don’t know where a caribou would come from,” Morgan said. “We don’t know of any farms that have them in this area. I’ve been here four years, and I’ve never seen one.”
The caribou is a species of reindeer. They live mostly in the arctic regions of northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland. There also are large herds in northern Europe and in Siberia, Russia. The Colorado Department of Agriculture, Division of Wildlife and the State Veterinarian’s office have no records of caribou in Colorado.
« CARIBOU OR REINDEER?
According to literature, the caribou is a wild species of reindeer. The animals look the same, but the caribou is larger in size, between the size of a deer and an elk.
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[...] Yesterday I brought you the story of the Caribou that turned up in Colorado. Well officals have had some time to look at this animal and they are certain it came from a game ranch because of a tag in it’s ear. “It’s very doubtful he was native to this area,” said Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Tyler Baskfield. As evidence, Baskfield points to a tag inscribed with a “4″ attached to the animal’s ear, which indicates it may have escaped from a nearby preserve or ranch for wild animals. “We’re pretty certain he didn’t migrate down here,” Baskfield said. “But with wildlife, once you say something is for certain, something always comes up to shock you.” Wild caribou have been seen as far south as northern Washington, said Aron Crowell, Alaska regional director of the Arctic Studies Center in Anchorage. But Crowell agreed a caribou in Colorado is about as a rare as a whale in the South Platte River. [...]