Rediscovering home: Elk populations

It was likely but an illusion.   

Throughout the 45 years I was away from my hometown, I returned a couple times a year to visit mother. Elk appeared to be more prevalent with each passing year as I visited the various drainages.

You see, during my prime hunting years, my family was able to bag only one elk. Dad did not like venison, so other than game birds and waterfowl, we hunted elk. I watched over the years with pride as dad and my brothers would usually bring up two or three elk each season. We only had so many rifles so it wasn’t until I was in high school that I could really join the hunt. Then, it seemed the elk were few and far between.   

So, I called the folks at the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department to test my conclusion that the population had rebounded. Well, I am seeing more elk, but it has more to do with where they hang out. 

Ryan Klimstra, the regional wildlife biologist, told me while the elk population has remained the same or increased somewhat, “the distribution of [elk] on the landscape has also changed. Instead of finding elk in the large expanses of newly created habitat (habitat created specifically through logging practices of Plum Creek) throughout the area, they are found near agriculture and the remaining timber-free grassy openings and meadows that still have forage to support them. It is hard to say exactly why we have seen a stable or increasing trend over the past 40 years in this area without having done a really detailed research study during this time.” 

Klimstra was kind enough to step out and give me “a couple of theories and a lot of speculation on what has changed. We do know harvest has decreased gradually in that area over time. That is likely related to the accessibility of elk. When there were huge tracts of timber harvested land, elk were easy to spot and easy to get at. Now that the habitat has completely changed (i.e., grown up into thick timber) elk are not as easy to spot and often can be on private land or behind gated public land that fewer and fewer are willing to hike beyond.” 

Creating habitat is the “single most important” variable that wildlife managers can control, but is also the “most expensive.” The four basic requirements of food, cover, water and space are interdependent.  “If one of those components is lacking, the other three don’t mean hardly as much. For example, elk can handle a high predator load if they have ample cover for security and high-quality food to grow big quickly and reproduce healthily and steadily and carry them through the winter and space to spread out and water. If you were to remove or weaken one of the pillars such as cover for security, the whole system becomes shaky, and the population suffers.” 

Klimstra said that “It is hard to put the finger exactly on why elk are doing so well without all the habitat they used to have but distribution is a likely contributor. When elk are no longer distributed widely throughout the backcountry, they tend to experience less predation as wolves and lions are a little more hesitant to venture into more human populated areas, but elk aren’t.”  

That is something that I find has changed – the elk seem more ready to hang closer to us.    

“So between the presence of predators and lack of habitat in the backcountry, elk may be pinched closer to urban areas.” 

Deer and elk inhabited the grasslands before moving into the forests as white settlement marched forward. Western Montana before logging “was not good elk country. Sure, there were elk and there always will be, but there were not huge numbers of elk before logging because there was not a lot of elk habitat,” Klimstra said. “At one point, elk were actually brought in and released back during the beginning of the logging days in order to help the population grow. It is important to note that there are elk in the backcountry and some really nice ones get harvested every year.” 

I see that wolves are once again a hot topic in the Legislature. It is hard sometimes to talk facts in a heated political environment, but I had to ask Klimstra about talk that wolves were killing off the lion-hunting hounds. He responded the agency “occasionally hear[s] someone say something to that effect but have yet to receive any factual evidence that it happened. That is not at all to say that it hasn’t happened, we just have not confirmed this to my knowledge. I do think it is a very big stretch to even suggest that wolves have killed off a bunch of hunting dogs and I really don’t like how those rumors spread. What I have heard directly from hound owners is that if they are in an area looking for cats to run and they see wolf tracks, they won’t release their dogs and that makes perfect sense to me.” 

Local hunting guide Kip Rugg reported, “[We] thankfully haven't had any run ins between my dogs and wolves, but I'm pretty diligent about checking the drainages for wolf tracks before turning anything loose. But that's not a definite either.”   

Rugg has heard talk of others, but he was personally aware that Aaron Kelly did lose “a few of his hounds the first couple of years he started hound hunting.” 

A study scheduled in the coming years will provide a “legitimate estimate” of the lion population in the region including Mineral County, Klimstra said.  

“For now, harvest numbers have remained stable and the composition of harvest (male vs. female and juvenile vs. adult) has not indicated any real change in population status.” 

Klimstra concluded: “Do wolves and lions kill elk? Absolutely! Are they the reason folks don’t find elk where they used to? Well wolves and lions may contribute some to that but overall it’s a habitat problem not a predator problem. Sure killing a bunch of wolves and lions will help temporarily but it won’t fix the issue of where elk are on the landscape. Creating high quality habitat (i.e., timber treatments, burns, etc.) is the only way to get elk distributed back across the landscape where people want them to be.” 

Match Sequel 

Recall the box of stick matches featured with my last column. Well, the expectation of the demand was a bit optimistic. And Castles Market ended up with a number of boxes. I got mine during the All-Class Reunion a number of years ago. The boxes handed out at the reunion probably came from the Castles batch, as former owners Ken and Cathy Kuhl, provide them for various community events. 

Newspaper Death

Given my lifelong career in either newspapers or representing them as an attorney, my heart hurt with the death of the Lincoln newspaper.   

I started at the Lovell Chronicle in a community of about 2,500 people. I saw that the newspaper was the virtual town square. A study found that when a newspaper dies in a rural community, government spending goes up. 

The demand for news has not dried up, but it has been the advertising, spurred largely by the advent of Facebook. The owner said the paper “always had a hell of a time attracting or keeping enough advertisers."  He lamented that “more people turned to [web] sites . . .for advertising and local information (accurate or not)."  

I can tell you firsthand that a newspaper is the best tool for levelling the playing field between those possessing power and those with little.