Photo: Christopher Martin

Nature photographer Christopher Martin was driving on a highway through Banff, Alberta, last weekend, when when he noticed an elk on a railway overpass ahead of him, behaving oddly. As is his instinct, Martin grabbed his camera and started snapping photos. “When I did, a wolf’s head came into view. It leaped up and bit the elk’s neck,” he says. Martin kept shooting.

The pack roams a large section of Bow Valley, where Banff is located, and Martin had spotted them before. "But I've never seen them this close to town,” he says.

Just two kilometers outside Banff’s town center, Martin watched with about 20 other people as the pack began to herd the elk across the bridge, then attacked it. “I went up a hill on one side of the bridge so I could better see what was going on,” Martin explains.

Read through the gallery to see the wolf attack from Christopher’s lens and read his first person account of witnessing it. You may find some of these images disturbing.