Gasp!
That was so cruel! Those who really loved it should've had protected this poor beast from it.
But you have to remember that during the time period this beast was living in, it was also one of the Ice Ages. It's body was well-suited for the harsh, cold weather. The Irish elk also was living in an area where there was not a lot of range, so no one had an estimate on how many of these beasts existed in the wild. Who knows, maybe with the leaps in bounds with genetics, we could bring this creature back to life. I did read an article ages ago that it is possibly to bring back the Wooly Mammoth due to having sufficient DNA from the frozen bodies we found of it buried in the tundra near the Arctic Circle (most Wooly Mammoth bodies are found in Russia, Siberia, and such). All they have to do is extract the DNA and insert the genetic code into an egg of an elephant. Then over the course of a decade or so with more genetic insertion of the Wooly Mammoth DNA into a hybrid mammoth/elephant, you can then get a full-blooded one. However due to the warmer climate, the mammoth would not survive the temperatures.