That's exactly what they were doing. It was legal, and while it may not fit your description of fair chase, it sounds as if it was a humane harvest. Which is the point of the controlled hunt.

There is also no description of the hunt leading up to the harvest itself. It is easy to infer from the pictures that the guy walked out there, pinned the elk on a peninsula and then shot the bull. But the reality could be much different. The elk could have been feeding in a normal pattern, the hunter used the wind, and available cover to get within range undetected by the animals, and then made his kill. Thus, the harvest was as humane and sporting as lots of other hunts that happen in our state. They just don't normally happen with audiences.

Guess what, I am going duck hunting on Saturday. We use decoys to trick the ducks into thinking they are landing with their friends, then we blast the sh!t out of them and laugh and hoot like slack jawed yokuls while they flap around on the water taking their last breaths, or wait to be executed by having their necks broken in our hands. I think that Elk died a much more humane death than what I just described, your idea of sporting or not, by the sounds of it the hunter did his job at the time of the kill.