Yellowstone News: Elk - Harvest in the Park

Harvest In the Park
Shooting elk in Grand Teton National Park remains a necessary tool.
By Rachel Odell, Jackson Hole News 12-16-99

At 30 minutes before sunrise last Thursday, a subtle light grew to reveal a herd of about 50 elk grazing in a meadow east of Blacktail Butte in Grand Teton National Park.
When the light turned from dark blue to grey, a large cow elk began walking toward the butte. The herd followed quietly.

As the sun approached the horizon, it gradually illuminated the snowy peaks of surrounding mountains and hunters scattered throughout the fields. Florescent orange caps, jackets and packs made them stand out from the flat, sage-covered landscape.

At 7:15, the start of the legal shooting hour, the first shot echoed through the meadow. The elk herd darted to the butte, taking a due-west path from the meadow's grassy center. Another shot rang out, and one of the elk fell wounded to the ground. The injured cow struggled and stood, then tried to bound after the herd.

Three more shots and hunter Buck Buchan had bagged his elk with his .270 caliber rifle.

A Casper resident who said he was older than 60, Buchan hunts elk each year in the Grand Teton elk reduction program. Walking less than a half mile to take his shots, Buchan said he relies on luck and other hunters to get his elk.

"When a whole herd comes stampeding by, it means you're lucky," Buchan said. "It took me four shots to get this one. If you are in the right place at the right time, you're going to get one."

Buchan was one of the few hunters who got an elk Thursday in the park hunt area that includes Antelope Flats, Blacktail Butte, the Snake River bottom, and the Kelley Hayfields. The herd that had been grazing disappeared onto the butte. The other hunt area includes the northeast area of the park near Two Ocean Lake, Uhl Hill, and Wolff Ridge.

The annual elk migration from the mountains to the valley came late this year. Many elk moved at night when hunters are not allowed to shoot them, and the overall harvest of 592 animals was down from previous years. Still, hunters were out in force, parking their trucks along the roads that bisect and surround the meadows, and creeping into the fields in hopes that elk would migrate by.

After Buchan and two companions gutted the cow, they filled out his license and headed for town where they planned on hiring someone to drag the carcass out. From a distance, hunters fired more shots.

Two cows and a calf bounded across antelope flats. A hunter shot at them. One elk fell and the other two ran in the opposite direction. The shooting continued until the calf fell. The remaining elk ran in its original direction as gunshots exploded like fire crackers. Buchan's companion Bill Watson paused with a grin as he listened to the cacophony.

"Somebody will get em'," he said.

He was right. Within minutes the third elk fell.

To the hunters the park elk reduction program - officials don't call it a hunt on purpose - is an opportunity to kill an elk without having to trek miles into the forest or the high country each year. They have the convenience of the road system, the knowledge of traditional elk migration patterns, and the benefit of other hunters pushing elk their way. They still endure harsh winds and zero-degree temperatures.

"The elk keep moving and moving and you just look at where they crossed the night before and wait," Casper hunter Tom Ray said. "Sometimes we wait for the people to shoot them and chase them back to us. They move kind of like a slow ping-pong ball game."

The hunt is allowed by law. The legislation that created the 1950 boundary of Grand Teton ensured hunting would continue. Hunting also is considered essential for bringing the herd numbers to or below objective, said Colin Campbell, park chief ranger.

The herd objective for the Jackson Hole Elk Herd is 11,000. There are an estimated 15,000 to 16,000 elk in the herd. About 7,000 to 8,000 elk migrate south through the park to spend the winter on the National Elk Refuge. Killing some of the herd before the animals reach the refuge is important, Campbell said.

"The overriding reason for the [reduction] program within the park and the greater herd is the balanced management of the herd," Campbell said. Some critics condemn the program, saying it is not a fair-chase hunt and is unethical.

Photographer and Jackson Hole resident Tom Mangelsen called the elk reduction program a massacre in which people stress the elk, slaughter them, and create a dangerous situation.

"It is not much of a hunt," Mangelsen said. "I don't think we are doing the elk any favor by having this kind of hunt. They get gut-shot, circled. It's a massacre. It's not a hunt in any way, shape, or form. A vehicle is not a fair thing to chase an animal with. It's a slob hunt."

Park rangers and Wyoming Game and Fish Department wardens are quick to point out that chasing elk with vehicles is illegal and that any hunter caught doing so will be cited and fined. Bill Long is the state's north valley game warden who patrols the park hunt nearly every day. He said the overwhelming majority of hunters are ethical sportsmen. This year law enforcement issued 33 citations to some of the 2,500 people hunting, he said.

"There's an awful lot of good hunters," Long said. "The word slob is a harsh word. I would go back to the numbers: 2,500 people, 33 violations. I would call the 33 slobs. If everybody was a slob there would be 2,500 violations."

Of the violations, 12 were for people who hunted in closed areas within a quarter mile of some roads. Other violations were for chasing animals with vehicles, and one person was cited for shooting an antelope instead of an elk.

The park issues hunting permits for bulls, cows, spikes - young bulls with unbrahnced antlers - and calves. This year hunters killed 592 elk. Of those, 342 were cows, 133 were bulls, 46 were spikes, 37 were male calves and 34 were female calves.

Also, the park enforces a half mile closure outside of the town of Kelly so that the elk have an escape route to the park, Campbell said. Rangers will stop hunters and allow elk to cross a road into and go through Kelly onto the refuge, Long said. Hunters and other drivers may not stop along a key portion of the road and block elk movement.

"Anytime you have a lot of elk and people together, you are going to have some fast-paced hunting and our job is to referee that and to make it safe," Long said.

The park should only allow cow hunting because that is the best way to reduce a herd, Mangelsen said.

"They shouldn't be shooting bull elk," he said. "If you are going to do reduction they should be shooting cows and calves."

Campbell said officials include bull permits in the program to give shooters a "full range of opportunities." He said that the opportunity to kill bulls attracts many people to the hunt, but added that officials emphasize the cow harvest. Further, the hunt was extended for a week this year and during the extension hunters could only kill cow elk, he said.

Killing females is the only way to permanently reduce the herd, said Bruce Smith, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist from the elk refuge. "What we need to do is harvest more females," Smith said. "That is the only way we are going to do it. Every cow we kill removes about 7 animals from the herd. But every bull only removes one animal."

That is because cows have an average of six calves in their life, he said. If a hunter kills a bull, another bull will go on to mate with the females, he said.

Smith, Campbell and Long agreed that the elk population is slowly dropping. Last year there were 7,300 elk on feed on the refuge, 200 below the maximum cap. It was the first time in 13 years that the refuge was within objective. Still, the overall herd was above 11,000, which means the managers have not met their objective, Campbell said. "Over the last four to five years we have taken aggressive actions in our attempt to promote a successful harvest," he said. "We saw some favorable signs. I am encouraged but careful because it is just one snapshot." A continued hunt is essential, Long said.

"We brought this herd down in the last seven years," Long said. "Every feedground was below population objective last year and there has been a concerted effort to try to get more elk on native winter range. These hunters are very capable of harvesting elk and have been for centuries." Moose resident Lyle McReynolds has observed the hunt for 25 years, nearly from his front porch. He lives in the park near Blacktail Butte and said the hunt is well-run and well-patrolled.

"We have never had any gunshots hit the house," McReynolds said. "When there are elk around there are park rangers around. It is not a fair chase hunt, but my question is, how else could you reduce the population? We have introduced wolves so we are doing something else." Hunters are happy to take on the task of killing more elk, Casper hunter Tom Ray said as he leaned against the tailgate of his faded Toyota pickup. "There's so many elk, they got to do something," Ray said. "We help them out a lot."

But Mangelsen would prefer to see the unwanted elk corralled and humanely slaughtered, he said. He also advocated ending the shooting in the meadows in an effort to encourage the elk to graze forage that is not on their refuge winter range.

"If we stopped hunting them in the park, they would stay up there later and wouldn't use up food so quickly on the refuge," he said. "Then the carrying capacity of the elk refuge may be larger."

Despite the criticism, hunters covet the opportunity to kill elk in the park, managers rely on them to cull the herds, and the Tetons will inevitably continue to draw fall hunters.

Darrel Drake of Sheridan no longer hunts, but the energetic elder spent a week in the sagebrush, clad in camouflaged, with a rifle slung across his shoulder

"I'm not here to get anything," he said. "I just like being out early in the morning, watching the elk."