Sunday, October 4, 2009

Evergreen Elk

Saturday night many people head out on the town, cozy in for movie night or put on their dancing shoes. We headed up to Evergreen in search of bugling elk. Every fall the elk are in rut and you can watch them bugle and herd their herd of lady elk. We are fortunate that elk are plentiful in Colorado and only 30 minutes away we found a wonderful display of elk in rut on the Evergreen golf course. Most years we head to Estes Park or Rocky Mountain National Park. This year we decided to stick to the local elk and head up the hill.

This was Oliver's first elk experience and he was amazed and in awe. He now knows what an elk is and can tell you what an elk says. Did you know that elk talk?
Right away we found, what we called, "the Big Guy". He was all fired up, fending off the other bull's. From this view point we could only see a few younger bull's mulling around but we could hear something over the hill.
"Big Guy" keeping his herd close by.
Keep in mind, this was on the golf course. See the wild golfer in the background? This guy was NUTS looking for his ball next to this big elk. I suppose these local elk are used to flying golf balls and golfers that are risky. I think I would have let the elk have my ball in this situation and drove right on by.
It is hard to tell here, but this is "Big Guy" bugling next to some of his ladies.
Colorado sand trap, elk included.
I'm telling you, this is as entertaining as a good drams.
"Big Guy" headed off over the hill in search of the other bugling elk who was threatening his herd.
Meanwhile, we saw two other elk, quietly come over the hill and swipe away all of the ladies. They didn't make a sound, just moved them on out away from "Big Guy".
The ladies being swept away. You can see the one bull in the front and then there is another one on top of the hill by the red bench.
I would have loved to have known what "Big Guy" did when he returned, but we didn't wait around for it. We did drive in the direction he headed and we saw him being greedy and herding in a few more ladies for his herd We also saw the one he had chased off, who was also quite large. I imagine he wasn't a happy camper when he came back over the hill and noticed that someone had swooped in and depleted his herd.

1 comment:

rbgarner said...

I'm missing our fall visit -

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