Elk damages car during rut at Lake Cowichan
Published 11:21 am Thursday, October 1, 2026
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While the sight of elk wandering around Lake Cowichan is generally commonplace for the folks who live in the small western Cowichan communities, the sight of an elk using a parked car as a launchpad is not.
It took Evergreen Place resident Bruce Roach seeing his building’s security camera footage to believe what had happened to his beloved 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme on Monday, Sept. 14. And even then, he’s still shocked, he told media following the incident.
The security camera footage shows a male elk chasing a female elk through the street before running onto the hood of a parked car, smashing through the windshield, and pausing briefly to remove its antlers from the inside of the vehicle before bouncing back off to run away again.
Sam Hildebrandt, the 55-plus complex’s manager, said the incident happened at about 5:30 a.m., but they didn’t know that until they saw the video a couple of hours later.
“I was putting the garbage cans out for Monday pickup, and Bruce, the owner of the car, was standing by and told me to take a look at his car, which was parked on the backside of Evergreen Place on Renfrew Street,” Hildebrandt explained.
“I looked at it and then went inside to check our surveillance camera to see if we had anything on camera and located the elk chasing other ones.”
The footage was remarkable, but not unsurprising to Hildebrandt.
“I haven’t seen anything like it, but it’s understandable because when the male is in rut, they don’t have a clear sense of their surroundings,” Hildebrandt said. “They have only one thing in mind, and that is to get lucky. I don’t think he realized that the car was even there.”
As for Roach, he’s now looking at repairing his vehicle for the third time in two years — but this is the first time it’s because of a wild animal, he told media.
He just got the 38-year-old car back from the body shop three weeks ago after a collision.
Roach noted that parts for aging cars are hard to come by, so he’ll be without his vehicle for some time once again. Even so, he’s going to get it fixed.