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VA Elk Hunt Help!

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wllm said:
I think your last sentence is likely true but the public land piece doesn't matter IMHO. Turkey/Bear/Whitetail/ etc live in great numbers east of the Mississippi primarily on private land.

IMHO it's a mindset about elk not an actual feasibility issue.
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That mindset about elk certainly exists here in southern MO. The ag people are a bit of a hurdle here as well.

We have 1 small elk herd, and quite a bit of habitat that I would think would work. It would help if that habitat wasn't quite as fragmented as it is.

I'd love to backpack hunt elk in the Smokies.
 
wllm said:
Going along with that...

I think we need to look at "intact landscapes" rather than public/private. Here is VT (obviously the white is also private the green is just private conservation areas).

I'd also be curious how elk in the east use the landscape... obviously way more food, do they stay put more? Move the same as in the west, live in the thick stuff like deer? etc.


View attachment 224533View attachment 224534
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It's probably worth looking at how elk interact with the landscape in Oregon. I bet that would be much more similar to the eastern side of the country than west (MT, CO, WY, etc.)

Anyone remember the new name of OregonChris so I can tag him?

Edit: Found him! @MT Rookie aka OR Chris (of course @wllm beat me by moments. . . )
 
There is also a history of failed reintroductions in the east that still affect things today. In Va they thought they had a great place with plenty of public land for them. The problem was, just like deer today, the elk found it easier to live around crop fields. So the battle began and money wins. It is unreasonable to expect a small farmer with less than 100 acres of crops to have them decimated and foot the bill for it. And limited state budgets won't foot the bill either. Using VT as an example, the elk will eventually figure out that the dairy's in the valley's are way better than the green mountains and go there. The outcome is inevitable. The same farm that can get a dozen or more kill permits for deer and not dent the population will decimate small local herds of elk, even with restricted numbers of tags. The elk in the east have not shown the ability to increase in numbers fast enough to overcome kill permits that will be inevitable in agricultural areas.

The current site in Va was specifically chosen for it's lack of crop land. There are cattle farms and grazing/hay land for the most part. There is not the amount of crop fields as there are in other areas of the state. As much as I'd love to have elk in the national Forest here in my area, the reality is, they won't stay there. And right,wrong, or indifferent it won't be tolerated.
 
VAspeedgoat said:
There is also a history of failed reintroductions in the east that still affect things today. In Va they thought they had a great place with plenty of public land for them. The problem was, just like deer today, the elk found it easier to live around crop fields. So the battle began and money wins. It is unreasonable to expect a small farmer with less than 100 acres of crops to have them decimated and foot the bill for it. And limited state budgets won't foot the bill either. Using VT as an example, the elk will eventually figure out that the dairy's in the valley's are way better than the green mountains and go there. The outcome is inevitable. The same farm that can get a dozen or more kill permits for deer and not dent the population will decimate small local herds of elk, even with restricted numbers of tags. The elk in the east have not shown the ability to increase in numbers fast enough to overcome kill permits that will be inevitable in agricultural areas.

The current site in Va was specifically chosen for it's lack of crop land. There are cattle farms and grazing/hay land for the most part. There is not the amount of crop fields as there are in other areas of the state. As much as I'd love to have elk in the national Forest here in my area, the reality is, they won't stay there. And right,wrong, or indifferent it won't be tolerated.
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Spot on.
 
BAKPAKR said:
Although I am not sure what ceanothus is, I have been in a bunch of super thick stuff from the Selway River north to the border and none of it matches the ferocity of rhododendron. The branches grow at weird angles, interlock with their neighbors, and largely resist bending.
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Know-it-all interlude.
Ceanothus - aka red stem, Elk Ice Cream.

nativeplantspnw.com

Red Stem Ceanothus, Ceanothus sanguineus

Redstem Ceanothus Rhamnaceae– The Buckthorn Family Ceanothus sanguineus Pursh (See-uh-NO-thus sang-GWIN-ee-us) Names: Redstem Ceanothus is also known as Redstem Wild Lilac, Redstem Buckbrush, Oregon Tea Tree, Northern Buckbrush, or “Soapbloom.” Sanguineus means blood red...
nativeplantspnw.com
 
Tag alder still owes me $380 for the Bulova watch and canteen I left somewhere on the sidehill of Grandmother Mountain as I was rolling and sliding down the canyon with a very loud case of Touret's. It's amazing how long a syllable an F-Bomb can be.

How the hell a buckled on wrist watch got ripped off is beyond me.
 
44hunter45 said:
Tag alder still owes me $380 for the Bulova watch and canteen I left somewhere on the sidehill of Grandmother Mountain as I was rolling and sliding down the canyon with a very loud case of Touret's. It's amazing how long a syllable an F-Bomb can be.

How the hell a buckled on wrist watch got ripped off is beyond me.
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The alders are what I am familiar with in Idaho. I crossed one thicket where I am certain I didn’t touch the ground for 50 yards, stepping from sweeping stock/stem to sweeping stock stem. There was a hot cow in that same thicket with 4 or 5 bulls after her. All we were seeing were glimpses of antlers and bodies. No bulls were harmed in the encounter.

A similarly thick rhododendron thicket would have been impassable to cottontails.
 
VAspeedgoat said:
There is also a history of failed reintroductions in the east that still affect things today. In Va they thought they had a great place with plenty of public land for them. The problem was, just like deer today, the elk found it easier to live around crop fields. So the battle began and money wins. It is unreasonable to expect a small farmer with less than 100 acres of crops to have them decimated and foot the bill for it. And limited state budgets won't foot the bill either. Using VT as an example, the elk will eventually figure out that the dairy's in the valley's are way better than the green mountains and go there. The outcome is inevitable. The same farm that can get a dozen or more kill permits for deer and not dent the population will decimate small local herds of elk, even with restricted numbers of tags. The elk in the east have not shown the ability to increase in numbers fast enough to overcome kill permits that will be inevitable in agricultural areas.

The current site in Va was specifically chosen for it's lack of crop land. There are cattle farms and grazing/hay land for the most part. There is not the amount of crop fields as there are in other areas of the state. As much as I'd love to have elk in the national Forest here in my area, the reality is, they won't stay there. And right,wrong, or indifferent it won't be tolerated.
Click to expand...
100% my thoughts as well. We have way more NF than needed to support elk the problem is there is practically zero grazing area in those forest and they are all mature hardwoods or laurel thickets.
 
VAspeedgoat said:
There is also a history of failed reintroductions in the east that still affect things today. In Va they thought they had a great place with plenty of public land for them. The problem was, just like deer today, the elk found it easier to live around crop fields. So the battle began and money wins. It is unreasonable to expect a small farmer with less than 100 acres of crops to have them decimated and foot the bill for it. And limited state budgets won't foot the bill either. Using VT as an example, the elk will eventually figure out that the dairy's in the valley's are way better than the green mountains and go there. The outcome is inevitable. The same farm that can get a dozen or more kill permits for deer and not dent the population will decimate small local herds of elk, even with restricted numbers of tags. The elk in the east have not shown the ability to increase in numbers fast enough to overcome kill permits that will be inevitable in agricultural areas.

The current site in Va was specifically chosen for it's lack of crop land. There are cattle farms and grazing/hay land for the most part. There is not the amount of crop fields as there are in other areas of the state. As much as I'd love to have elk in the national Forest here in my area, the reality is, they won't stay there. And right,wrong, or indifferent it won't be tolerated.
Click to expand...

I get it… but it’s also funny to read this compared to the MT elk threads.

Ok so no elk in VT because of the dairy guy, but screw the MT rancher who doesn’t want his winter wheat leveled.

It’s all the same thing, human tolerance.
 
wllm said:
I get it… but it’s also funny to read this compared to the MT elk threads.

Ok so no elk in VT because of the dairy guy, but screw the MT rancher who doesn’t want his winter wheat leveled.

It’s all the same thing, human tolerance.
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It's just not that simple at all. It's not just tolerance. It's population density of both humans and wildlife. It's the intensity of the pressure by the elk and on the elk. Very little can be compared between agriculture in Montana and anywhere in the eastern sea board. The value of an acre of corn in Vermont vs an acre of winter wheat in Montana isn't even remotely close. Neither will the response to the damage be remotely close.

Wildlife management is so vastly different to make a comparison like that would be like me saying Montana should issue 5 deer tags with every license with no limits. Why wouldn't it work, it does in Va. Hell make it 10 that works in Georgia.

Honestly I 150% envy your positivity on this. Hell, maybe I'm trying to be a pessimist and hope I'm wrong? I just don't see it happening....ever. But I will say in an idealistic world, you are likely right about the size and number of the herd. Though I stand by OTC tags not being viable.
 
Funny we ended up talking about Vermont and the state never had elk, lol

I do have a habitat question for consideration. Are elk grazers or browsers? I know all whitetail deer and New England moose are browsers but I always figured elk as grazers. I wasn't sure but I thought it was why the elk in KY, TN, WV and VA were all done in coal country where the mountain tops were open and not forested. But maybe after a few generations they learn to browse? Curious for an explanation.
 
VAspeedgoat said:
Funny we ended up talking about Vermont and the state never had elk, lol

I do have a habitat question for consideration. Are elk grazers or browsers? I know all whitetail deer and New England moose are browsers but I always figured elk as grazers. I wasn't sure but I thought it was why the elk in KY, TN, WV and VA were all done in coal country where the mountain tops were open and not forested. But maybe after a few generations they learn to browse? Curious for an explanation.
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They prefer to graze, but they're highly adaptable and even elk with lots of grass available will browse certain plants and if necessary can survive on mostly browse. Alfalfa, peas, etc are technically browse and they like those a lot.
 
Sixth tag: “The lucky hunter was from Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

First time ever a New Mexican has been happy to draw out of state.
 
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