| Can you imaging
going east of the Rockies to hunt elk? Each
year, over 700,000 elk hunters spend over $34 million on elk licenses alone. With related
hunting expenditures, elk hunting has become a multi-million dollar industry in many
western states. The future looks good for elk, and record book bulls are taken every year.
Some of the hot spots produce mammoth bulls. The future of elk was not so promising a
hundred years ago when elk were almost wiped off the map. Elk were at one time the most
widely distributed member of the deer family in North America - found everywhere except
the Great Basin desert and Southern coastal plains. Their great population was estimated
to total 10 million before European man arrived. The great reduction in elk numbers is
attributed to market hunting and agriculture taking over the elk habitat. The population
dipped to as low as 90,000 in 1922, with almost half of these elk making their home in
Yellowstone Park,
Wyoming.
Yellowstone Park became a refuge and lifeline for the elk
and the reason we have elk still with us today. Between 1912 and 1967 more than 13,500 elk
were transplanted from the Park. Due to the transplant of these elk throughout the West,
elk have grown from small numbers to many thousands. Arizona received a shipment of 83 elk
in 1913, which has now grown into a herd of 35,000 and has produced more 400-point bulls
than any other state.
By 1860 all of the elk that inhabited Nevada were
completely gone, but were reintroduced in 1932 with elk from Yellowstone Park. Since then,
elk have been transplanted from Oregon, Utah and Idaho. Elk in the Table Mountain region,
which is northeast of Tonopah, Nevada, came from the Hardware Ranch in Utah. This area was
not known for producing record book bulls until 1998 when one of the biggest typical bull
elk was taken scoring 425 B&C points and another scoring 384. The herd has matured,
much to the delight of the Nevada Fish and Game and hunters.
Even though much of the reintroduction of elk throughout
the West happened in the early to mid 1900s, it is still going on today. Northeast Oregon
is suffering from elk depredation problems and has too many elk for the area. Relocating
the elk within the state was not feasible due to available habitat. Instead of relocating
the elk within Oregon, the elk have been shipped to Kentucky. Kentucky is seeking to
bolster their elk herds and this solves the problem for both states and creates a win-win
situation.
Oregon was once the recipient of such a transplant. In 1912
and 1913, Oregon received two shipments of elk from Jackson Hole, WY because of perilously
low elk numbers (see related
story "Taft Bull"). Kentucky received shipments of elk in the year 2000 from
three different states to increase their young elk herd to about 600. In 2001, an
examination of the bulls taken during Kentucky's first elk hunt since the mid- 1800s
revealed some positive results. Because of the state's plentiful food supply and milder
winters, Biologists have found antler development to be faster than herds in the western
states. Some believe that Kentucky will harbor world class elk in the coming years.  |
