Well then so it's not just me. I definitely remember in a previous version animals like elk had been modified to escape into water when pursued by the player. I don't remember if forest reindeer were supposed to have been modified to escape into water too. Anyway, can Sami comment on this? Are the animals supposed to escape into water or not? That's definitely what a real life animal would do (refer to National geog documentaries etc).
Also, referring to a previous post, why are there bull elks but no bull forest reindeer?
I don't remember animals escaping into water - certainly neither in v3.40 (where I played most) nor in v3.18. I use technique of cornering them in the marshes, and they try only to dart past my character when no other way, but never into water.
As for bull elks, they are just renamed stags from before v3.50, which were in the game for years. The stags were always to represent bull elks, and normal elks were to represent females (or adolescents) anyway, with difference in average size (stag elks were 300 kg on average, elks were 250 kg on average), and with difference in skin size. As far as I can say now, bull elks are identical to former stags. I think I saw the information about this renaming on Steam news.
Also I'm not sure that real life elks would escape into unknown water, if they don't have to (and in the game usually they don't, because they can run past you). Sure, they can travel on the bottom of lakes and the like, but they prefer to take cover in the forest and run, because they can do it much faster than in water if need be (6x faster). I have seen real two elks near my home in December (there was a third, a calf, reported nearby), and there is a kind of marsh, and they were escaping (after first staying still for 5 minutes) not into the marsh, but in the forest, though rather slowly.
Anyway, it would be more challenging, but I haven't seen it in the game.