I'm now imagining being in the woods at night with a headlamp on. An elk, head down, charging me with its rack pointed at my chest and glowing like its fresh from the flames of hell.
I'm not ruling that out as a way I might like to die one day.
Scary enough to stumble on one in the deep woods at 3AM. One of the only times I nearly drew my gun was seeing a triangular face staring at me from 15'. Had seen a Florida Panther the year before and my dumb ass thought that's what it was.
They're not painting elk. They're painting reindeer. They're always just chilling on the roads in Lapland.
They're semi domesticated, so a bit different to handle than wild elk, especially the ones like in America, which are bigger than ours. We do have moose though, but no-one tried to paint them, lol.
Even if it was brightly glowing, predators would not approach. They're actually very skittish around new stuff. And once they figure out it's the giant deer with head knives, they'd refrain from going near them because of that. Just like they already do.
Tbf. Not that many predators left in northern Sweden/Norway/Finland. And believe me that the Sami reindeer owners work their hardest to illegally hunt the remaining down.