Elk gores man at Colorado golf course, punctures kidney

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A man in Colorado found out over the weekend about a different type of hazard at an area golf course when he was gored by an elk.

The incident happened Saturday at the Evergreen Golf Course in Evergreen, located about 28 miles west of downtown Denver.

Zak Bornhoft was golfing with three friends when a bull elk charged their golf cart, stabbing him in the stomach.

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The elk's antler traveled all the way through Bornhoft's body, puncturing his kidney.

“The doctor told me 3 inches, either way, we wouldn’t be sitting here," Zak’s wife, Megan Bornhoft, told FOX31. "He said it would have been better to have been stabbed with a knife because of the dirt on the elk antlers."

Zak Bornhoft was gored by an elk on Saturday at the Evergreen Golf Course, located west of Denver, Colorado. (Megan Bornhoft/Facebook)

Zak Bornhoft shared a recap of the encounter on a Facebook post that has since been made private, saying that he and his friends  “definitely were not playing with the elk!”

“There was absolutely nothing I could do in my situation, " he wrote in a post that was titled “Zak vs The Elk.” "It’s unbelievable how fast and wide the news travels. So here’s the real story. The Elk owned the property and he didn’t want us on it.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t try to play with the Elk, I took pictures from a distance and zoomed in the photos," he wrote. "The driver of my cart is devastated but there wasn’t really anything he could do. We were just trying to get away.”

Bornhoft was transported to an area hospital, where he was hospitalized in the intensive care unit but was in stable condition. His wife shared on her own Facebook post that's also been made private that the trauma team "put Zak under last night to flush his wound, they were able to clean up until his back muscle, but could not safely go further."

She later wrote her husband felt better "now that he got some food in his belly," and she was very thankful "this buck struck where it did."

Zak Bornhoft was gored by an elk on Saturday at the Evergreen Golf Course, located west of Denver, Colorado. He is now recovering in a hospital. (Megan Bornhoft/Facebook)

"I’m blessed to be sitting next to my husband, even if it’s masked up in a ICU room,” she wrote.

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Two days before the incident, Colorado Parks and Wildfire shared on Twitter that a young bull elk was spotted at the golf course "having a hard time getting around" because it had a can on its front left leg.

Officials also shared a video warning why it was important to keep a distance from the animals that on average have "700 pounds of pure muscle."

"You don't want this coming at you," the agency said.

Other witnesses to the Saturday incident said the bull was charging at other golf carts. Wildlife officials said that elk are in mating season this time of the year, which makes bulls aggressive.

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“Elk love to go onto that golf course for the green grass and there’s a lot of people who love to go and watch them and we’ve got to all kind of find a way to co-exist,” Jason Clay with Colorado Parks and Wildlife told CBS4.  “These are very powerful animals and an incident like this could really end up killing someone.”