Mustangs Rule
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- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
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A Bull Elk, A Buck Deer and a Huge Black Wolf
Some years ago I took a position teaching field biology at a rural high school near what once could have been the largest elk herd in the mountain west.
The core summer feeding ground was a meadow system that was many tens of thousands of acres and did not dry out during the hot summers. By virtue of a natural hydrology system from surrounding mountains it was so well watered. It was a grazing goldmine, borderline marshland.
How many thousands of elk and deer must have once been there can only be imagined. Add to that the surrounding higher ground, offered the best imaginable elk wintering ground with endless bitter brush. This was once "An Elk Serengeti” .
The ground was so well watered naturally that much of it was too moist, too soft for the heavy equipment needed for harvesting hay. In the spring the caravans of trucks towing cattle trailers came, and came and came. The cattle numbered not in the hundreds but in the several thousands. They were hauled away fat in the fall. The winter temps there could get to 30 below and the land covered with four feet of snow.
To the best of my knowledge the main elk herd was reduced to between 150 and 200. I actually did winter count on snowshoes and verified that number myself. There were other scattered pockets of elk, but still a pittance compared to the number that were once there.
Near the meadow system there was a huge chunk of forest dark and deep. I roamed, I scouted, I tracked and in the middle of two roaring mountain creeks there was some country opened up by a fire decades ago. I hunted deer there, and would take a nice buck, up close and personal with my .308 Sako Finnlight Carbine. I quartered it out, and carried it out, over a roaring creek. So great it was to be so young and strong.
While there, I came across what was surely the hugest pile of wolf scat I had ever seen, jet black, blue black, shiny full of processed protein.
It was from a huge lone male timber wolf. This remote open space deep in the forest was his home.
There were not supposed to be any wolves here at all. I checked and later I called those state and federal biologists in charge of such information. Once I identified myself as a biologist, they verified that, they flooded me with info and asked that I give them anything I could. Hair samples for DNA identification would be great.
Getting those would prove easy. On the edge of the national forest was part of that great grassland and this big male wolf would go there about every week to eat a calf or yearling cow, and he would cross a barbed wire fence and leave a small bundle of hair,,,all black like his dung.
Considering how much the cattle industry had taken from that land, the loss of critical habitat for thousands of elk, as many deer for sure, it seemed like what he was taking was nothing, but I am sure the ranchers would disagree, but I am not a rancher.
I am a biologist and big game hunter and could only wish those tens of thousands of acres of grassland were still covered with deer, elk and wolves. Wolves which following an ancient relationship were keeping the big game herds cleansed of the prions that have always been there and cause Chronic Wasting Disease. CWD has now reached epidemic level in many areas. All it does it does is spread and get worse. We lost the clean up crew that pulled it out of the general herd population and condensed it, in the wolves and their dung and pee which herbivores want nothing to do with.
Every year who knows how many tens of thousands of hunters and their families are eating meat with an unpredictable disease causing agent in it. The dieases caused by prions have incredibley long incubations periods,,,years.
I only hunt deer and elk where there are wolves.
Making tracking the big wolf easy, there was a gravel forest service road running parallel to the meadow land and during light fall snow after I took my deer when later hunting grouse I saw his tracks and did the measurements. They were staggering just a few inches less center of hip joint to center of shoulder joint than a fully mature bull elk who also lived in that dark timber but went out daily to graze in the grassland.
Often I would see where this big wolf peed and pooped and I would offer my own to match. I followed him, he followed me, I never saw him but he saw me. Once I tracked him in a small half circle and saw where he sat under a pine tree and watched me walk right by.
One day I saw that there were two wolves, a female wolf had found him. Their tracks showed a new playful pattern of running on fallen logs, under them, big and small circles chasing each other,,,all play.
After the cattle were hauled away for the winter, the wolves hung around for a bit. Then one day a big snow fell. I snowshoed out to where I saw their tracks so often.
There were huge drifts and snow so deep the females belly was dragging in the snow. They were heading straight for the higher rolling hills that were covered with bitter brush and the wintering ground for elk.
I bear those wolves no ill will. Actually I wish them well, keeping the elk herd clean during a time when the elk are bunched up together and can spread disease.
MR
Some years ago I took a position teaching field biology at a rural high school near what once could have been the largest elk herd in the mountain west.
The core summer feeding ground was a meadow system that was many tens of thousands of acres and did not dry out during the hot summers. By virtue of a natural hydrology system from surrounding mountains it was so well watered. It was a grazing goldmine, borderline marshland.
How many thousands of elk and deer must have once been there can only be imagined. Add to that the surrounding higher ground, offered the best imaginable elk wintering ground with endless bitter brush. This was once "An Elk Serengeti” .
The ground was so well watered naturally that much of it was too moist, too soft for the heavy equipment needed for harvesting hay. In the spring the caravans of trucks towing cattle trailers came, and came and came. The cattle numbered not in the hundreds but in the several thousands. They were hauled away fat in the fall. The winter temps there could get to 30 below and the land covered with four feet of snow.
To the best of my knowledge the main elk herd was reduced to between 150 and 200. I actually did winter count on snowshoes and verified that number myself. There were other scattered pockets of elk, but still a pittance compared to the number that were once there.
Near the meadow system there was a huge chunk of forest dark and deep. I roamed, I scouted, I tracked and in the middle of two roaring mountain creeks there was some country opened up by a fire decades ago. I hunted deer there, and would take a nice buck, up close and personal with my .308 Sako Finnlight Carbine. I quartered it out, and carried it out, over a roaring creek. So great it was to be so young and strong.
While there, I came across what was surely the hugest pile of wolf scat I had ever seen, jet black, blue black, shiny full of processed protein.
It was from a huge lone male timber wolf. This remote open space deep in the forest was his home.
There were not supposed to be any wolves here at all. I checked and later I called those state and federal biologists in charge of such information. Once I identified myself as a biologist, they verified that, they flooded me with info and asked that I give them anything I could. Hair samples for DNA identification would be great.
Getting those would prove easy. On the edge of the national forest was part of that great grassland and this big male wolf would go there about every week to eat a calf or yearling cow, and he would cross a barbed wire fence and leave a small bundle of hair,,,all black like his dung.
Considering how much the cattle industry had taken from that land, the loss of critical habitat for thousands of elk, as many deer for sure, it seemed like what he was taking was nothing, but I am sure the ranchers would disagree, but I am not a rancher.
I am a biologist and big game hunter and could only wish those tens of thousands of acres of grassland were still covered with deer, elk and wolves. Wolves which following an ancient relationship were keeping the big game herds cleansed of the prions that have always been there and cause Chronic Wasting Disease. CWD has now reached epidemic level in many areas. All it does it does is spread and get worse. We lost the clean up crew that pulled it out of the general herd population and condensed it, in the wolves and their dung and pee which herbivores want nothing to do with.
Every year who knows how many tens of thousands of hunters and their families are eating meat with an unpredictable disease causing agent in it. The dieases caused by prions have incredibley long incubations periods,,,years.
I only hunt deer and elk where there are wolves.
Making tracking the big wolf easy, there was a gravel forest service road running parallel to the meadow land and during light fall snow after I took my deer when later hunting grouse I saw his tracks and did the measurements. They were staggering just a few inches less center of hip joint to center of shoulder joint than a fully mature bull elk who also lived in that dark timber but went out daily to graze in the grassland.
Often I would see where this big wolf peed and pooped and I would offer my own to match. I followed him, he followed me, I never saw him but he saw me. Once I tracked him in a small half circle and saw where he sat under a pine tree and watched me walk right by.
One day I saw that there were two wolves, a female wolf had found him. Their tracks showed a new playful pattern of running on fallen logs, under them, big and small circles chasing each other,,,all play.
After the cattle were hauled away for the winter, the wolves hung around for a bit. Then one day a big snow fell. I snowshoed out to where I saw their tracks so often.
There were huge drifts and snow so deep the females belly was dragging in the snow. They were heading straight for the higher rolling hills that were covered with bitter brush and the wintering ground for elk.
I bear those wolves no ill will. Actually I wish them well, keeping the elk herd clean during a time when the elk are bunched up together and can spread disease.
MR
