High Points: Elk on the move

They came by again last evening. A herd of maybe 40 to 50 Colorado elk moving slowly through the pasture below my house in Old Snowmass. I love it when they pass by in their daily migrations. It just feels so … natural.

I have been seeing a lot of elk lately. And not just up on the mesa where I live but around the valley as well. Occasionally they will hang out, munching the grass on the Snowmass side of the airport beyond the tall fences and spreading out by Owl Creek Road. A herd spends a lot of time on the bench above the Roaring Fork in McLain Flats, often crossing the road at night in a single file — well, I wouldn’t call it precision, but at least in a fairly organized procession. Last week, they were massed in the old potato fields on the lower reaches of Lower River Road.

I long thought that the elk I am viewing in my neighborhood represented a diminishing population that was being pushed aside from their natural habitat and simply trying to adjust to human intervention. Turns out, not really.

Do you know what the elk population is in Colorado? Care to guess? It is estimated that there are somewhere between 280,000 and 300,000 elk walking the woods as we speak. To put that in perspective, if the elk were to form their own municipality, let’s dub it Elk Mountain for giggles, Elk Mountain would be the fourth largest city in the state behind Denver, Colorado Springs and the booming metropolis of Aurora. Who knew? The current population of elk, not to be confused with moose, which are solitary creatures, is about one million throughout the West, with Colorado maintaining, by far, the largest portion of the population.

So that’s why we see all those hunters in the fall. Last year, around 130,000 permits were issued to elk hunters and just shy of 40,000 elk were taken, or harvested, in the state. The town of Craig in Moffat County, about a three-hour drive from here, is known as the “Elk Hunting Capital of the World.” And yes, that was trademarked in 2012.

Now this dog don’t hunt, and my interest in the elk is more emotional than intellectual, but I am told that without the reduction of the herds there would be starvation and rampant disease in the overpopulated elk world. That an un-hunted herd would result in even higher mortality rates. The argument goes that the hunters are part of the ecosystem that helps keep the elk healthy by playing a role in keeping the herds at reasonable levels. I can see that argument holding water.

But for me, right now, I am happy that it is springtime and that the elk are treading through the woods and scrub oak around my house, grazing in the grass and getting ready to calve.

 It just seems so … natural.