I went for a walk up by the Arapaho Peaks last Saturday. I went to get away from the road a little bit and see if the elk had moved up that far yet.
Walking in I had my doubts, the green up had hardly begun, probably not enough for the elk to move up the hill. I might have seen a little bit of sign on the way in, nothing fresh enough or profuse enough to make me think many, if any, elk, were around. Elk like to eat the youngest most nutritious sprouts of grass. The older the grass the more their digestive system has to work to make the plants digestible. Below you can see some aspens just barely sprouting leaves, others not at all. Most of the species of grass were only an inch or two high.
I took the long way in. It's shorter to follow the path across the swamp but I've flushed moose in there before and I don't like walking up on moose unexpectedly. The long way might still have moose but it's more open and has lots of mid-sized trees.
Below is just a little lower down the hill than the previous photo, and much fewer aspens are beginning to leaf. The bushes on this side of the rock are willows which were sprouting their catkins which are the bushy little buds that are the flower. Around the willows you can see all the still dead grasses of last year. Too small to see are tiny green shoots of grass coming up. Snow still showing white in the trees.
I weathered an early season snowstorm one October underneath a tarp by that downed tree left of the rock. The wind was right off the divide, I hiked out the third day. I now have a tent, keeps snow out.
It’s calving time. Cow elk are eating not only to replace all the weight lost during the long winter but also to make very thick nutrient rich milk for their calves. The better the milk the sooner the calf gains enough strength to run away from the bears. A lot of elk calves get eaten before they reach a month of age.
Sleeping I of course heard lots of coyotes. My tent was close to one of the best places around for animals, a large meadow with a marshy stream running through it and thick trees up close to it on the south. Coyotes don’t even register on my brain when I’m sleeping, we have them close to my house, every place I’ve been has them. Towards the later part of the night I heard a coughing type bark from the dense trees. Repeated every five or ten minutes. Couldn't figure that one out.
Above home sweet home. In front of the tent is a good view of a portion of the meadow which we call park out here. It stretches a quarter mile wide and a mile long if you count the swampy part with willows. In back of the tent, if I walk a hundred feet there is a good view of a slowly rising hillside that is open but with trees a favorite spot for elk with calves to graze.
At sunup I opened the tent flaps and heated water for coffee while sitting on my sleeping bag. Looking up I noticed a couple of cows wandering my way across the meadow. Moving slowly I turned the stove off and started sipping my coffee while glassing them with my binoculars and camera.
Elk are grazers not browsers, some say that's why the meat is so mild. See the horse face on the front one? Classic. There were no others, just these two. It didn't look like a mom and a yearling, both the same size. Usually cows herd up for calf drop as much as they can, best to have some other calves around for bears to eat so they're more apt to leave your calf alone, I couldn't tell if they were pregnant.
Maybe they caught some movement or maybe the shape of the tent was just a little too unusual, whatever the case those girls were nervous about me. They grazed much less frequently, then quickly stopped grazing and started peering and listening. The wind was towards me, maybe some kind of backdraft had brought my scent to them. They'd turn their head sideways watching for movement out of one eye, then look straight at me using the front vision where the eyes overlap and they have depth perception. They never did run away. They'd look then walk a couple steps away then look and walk a couple steps. Elk cover ground at an amazingly fast pace. 200 yards grew to 400 yards in a couple minutes, all while seemingly not walking away, then they blended into the tall willows a third of a mile on the other side of the meadow, and then the trees. Gone.
These were not tame elk. They are preyed upon. Probably bear and the cats and humans.
Below the twisted entrails are tracks and scat so skip it now if you're not into it. Story is over.
Below is my first moose scat photo. I took it up behind my tent. They seemed so big, but then all moose scat seems big. I was over at Motley Moose the other day and someone had posted a photo of moose scat they'd found on google images. They all thought it was small not realizing I think that ungulates leave pellets. One commenter gave an "oooh yuch, he's holding it in his hand" which is also kind of funny, I don't know how many ungulate scats I've broken up with my fingers but if I'm hot on the trail and I want to know today or yesterday nothing beats breaking it apart.
Notice the mold frosting? Probably last fall, no yellow too, but more on that in a bit.
The pile above is at a different place. Hillside covered with piles of moose crap. Down close to the willows there was a pile every six feet. The moose do their part to make a lush meadow able to support a wide variety of flowers.
The outside covering is off these, inside is the definitive yellow of willow bark. Moose love willow, I always seem to see them belly deep in some willow swamp. There are a lot of moose but tags are uncommon. I have 3 preference points which means next year I'll be in the real drawing but with an extremely small chance of getting a tag. Each year my chances will increase. Most people who draw have twelve or thirteen points. With the initial points that means fifteen years of waiting. Maybe they'll liberalize the draw if moose seem overpopulated. Success is very high with moose. Fifty percent. That's as high as deer. Easy enough to find I guess and they don't get all crafty like elk. All bets are off if a certain neighbor to the north comes before I draw.
Above are how I typically see moose tracks. On line they are always close together. I guess I usually am out looking around in the snow which would tend to splay them more. Maybe the Shiras moose, which is what they call the subspecies around here, has more spread apart hooves, I don't know.
Other than as something interesting to look at I'm not so much into moose. Can't eat them, they cause trouble by being belligerent and stuff, they get in the way when I'm looking for other things.
Above elk greenies not looking so green. In the spring instead of nuggets the elk pellets clump together into big old wet turds. Looking carefully though you can still make out the irregular and definitive asymmetrical shape of elk. The rich shoots of emerging grass are so nutritious and wet they need little digestion and there is no need to retain all the water, they just pass right on through.
Maybe the rest of the herd will be up shortly with new calves.
2:42 PM PT: A big thank you for the rescue. I have been out hiking today and Couldn't respond to comments earlier. Camping now and using my iPhone.