Everything is speculation at best, there are zero facts presented. Apparently the elk had been limping around for a few months, then suddenly dropped 400 pounds and collapsed out of the blue. According to the expert wildlife biologist Twitter user, the entire femur is gone but a green polymer tip and "bullet fragments of a 5.56 round" magically pop out of the middle of the mass. The article on ijr just references the exact same article on Western Journal, which is just a clickbait aggregation of Twitter posts from a single account. No links to anything from Montana FWP or any other corroborating evidence. The author (Warner Todd Huston) appears to be a semi-professional editorial writer from Chicago. Long on opinions, short on facts, but sensationalism sells and that "article" is currently the top story for Western Journal today.