From 1990-1993, I studied Roosevelt elk in a 900 sq. mile area of the Oregon Coast Range near Coquille and Myrtle Point. Twenty-nine elk were temporarily tranquilized by darting them from a wild-flying helicopter, and then fitted with radio-collars so that I could track them with a radio-receiver. The intent of the study was to determine if roads and vehicle traffic altered elk habitat use. For 14 months, I followed the animals and noted their locations and became familiar with some of their habits. Despite seeing them almost daily, every elk encounter was an uplifting moment in my life. These impressive animals with their large bodies, long legs, horse-like snouts, and white rumps always made me smile. Perhaps that inward happiness was an evolutionary emotion, inherited from a hunter-gatherer who smiled when elk were nearby because these animals represented food, shelter, clothing, and tools. Most of us have little contact with such large, wild free-ranging mammals like elk so I suspect my smile was also part of the amazement of encountering big wild things.
I learned much from the elk that I tracked with my beeping receiver and hand-held antenna. I discovered that despite their size that they were adept at hiding and moving silently through a forest. Once will tracking an elk in an old growth forest, I paused next to a 200 year Douglas-fir to adjust my radio-receiver and collect my bearings. I peered up and noticed a rhododendron branch moving under another tree 25 feet from where I was standing. An elongated nose pushed through the bush and the elk that I was tracking stared at me for a few seconds and then silently withdraw back into the brush. If I had not looked up at that moment, I would never have seen or heard the animal.
The members of the Lewis and Clark expedition ate a lot of wild game. Some suggest that each member of the expedition consumed 7-9 lbs of meat a day when game was available. A tally of the animals killed for food during the journey suggested that deer (1,001 animals) and elk (375 animals) were the most common sources for meat, but they also ate a fair share of bison (227), big-horned sheep (35), grizzly bears (23), dogs (190) and many other various and sundry creatures along the expedition’s route. Apparently, when more flavorful items were not available, they occasionally munched on a few eagles, crows, muskrats, gophers and marine mammals. The members of the expedition, according to the journals, liked to harvest elk because they were often plentiful and large. Like Lewis and Clark’s men, elk spend a lot of time searching and consuming food. They can neatly clip a leaf from a tree or a blade of grass from a meadow. I frequently encountered them on the edges of clear-cuts during frosty mornings in early spring feeding on the new shoots of forbs and grasses.
“this senery already rich pleasing and beatiful was still farther hightened by immence herds of Buffaloe, deer Elk and Antelopes which we saw in every direction feeding on the hills and plains. I do not think I exagerate when I estimate the number of Buffaloe which could be compre[hend]ed at one view to amount to 3000.” ~ From the Journal of Meriwether Lewis, Sep. 17, 1804
Elk or wapiti (Cervus Canadensis) is the largest deer species in North America. They have an even number of toes like camels, goats and cattle on each foot, and a four-chambered stomach that allows them to digest rough foods. In Europe the moose is called elk. Wapiti in Europe refers to red deer and many thought that North American elk were just a subspecies of red deer. However, some recent DNA analysis suggests that elk and red deer are likely a separate species. It was thought that up to six subspecies of elk roamed across North America during the time of Euro-American settlement, but today only 4 remain including two, Rocky Mountain elk (C. elaphus nelsoni) and Roosevelt elk (C. elaphus roosevelti), that range into Oregon. However, recent genetic studies suggest that all the American subspecies are likely only one subspecies (C. canadensis canadensis). Apparently, ancient ancestors of modern elk browsed in the grasslands of North American during the Miocene. Elk survived the massive extinctions during the Pleistocene that were perhaps caused by a combination of environmental factors and the evolution of human hunting technology, and like bison remained abundant in North American until Europeans settled into farms and towns. Prior to the arrival of Euro-American settlers, elk were widely distributed in Oregon. They almost did not survive the market hunters of the 1800s in Oregon (and elsewhere) who severely diminished elk herds and caused the Oregon Legislature to enact protections for remnant populations. Through some active transplanting and legal protections, elk populations have rebounded in many areas of Oregon.
Native Americans loved elk and the astonishing benefits that they provided such as food, clothing, hides for shelters, horns (for digging sticks, knives, etc) and incorporated many connections to elk in their cultural practices and spiritual histories.
Most days in the field were pretty routine, but occasionally a day would be memorable. One evening during my early weeks in the field, I was descending from the Coast Range near Coos Bay and slowly hugging the right steep embanked edge of a narrow gravel logging road in my pick-up, knowing that occasionally logging trucks roared up and down these roads on their way to deliver or pick-up recently felled trees. No logging trucks that day, but instead a fast-moving small red Datsun car that whipped around a blind corner in front of me heading straight towards my truck before it turned sharply to the right and careened over a 200 foot embankment. I paused for a second with my heart thumping, and then leaped out of the truck and rushed to the edge of the cliff. The car was upturned in a thicket of shrubs a few hundred feet below. I heard the occupants scream something about getting a baby out before I slid down the embankment to the car. Two adults crawled out of the windows and I helped them un-strap a toddler that was hanging upside down restrained by his seat-belt. No injuries but the parents were bruised and shaken.
The summer that I started my field work was exceptionally dry, and by fall the forest was closed to the general public because of fire danger. The animals seemed to sense that they would not be bothered by humans or their vehicles so until the rains came, I often encountered elk bedded along grassy road sides, bobcats with beautiful spotted cream and russet fur sitting in the middle of the logging roads, and an occasional black bear loitering at intersections. Elk occasionally come down into the Willamette Valley. Sometimes they knock over fences and browse newly planted trees or crops to the chagrin of landowners. One early November day, Becca and I were hiking along a marsh trail on Finley Refuge and rounded a bend in the pathway. In a nearby field the fog hovered close to the ground. An elk herd was walking through the meadow, but all we could see was an occasional head that dipped in and out of the fog. We turned to each other and smiled.
