I took these photos last weekend. Some are fairly close up but I'm a voyeur. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder they say, we are interested in, and take photos of, that which interests us. I realize not everything is to everyone's taste, but there you have it.
Yup, it's about elk antlers, horns as we say.
There's actually a lot more to elk antlers than one might think. Notice how large the antlers of the elk are in proportion to his body? There are actually reasons for this that are more complicated than just impressing the ladies.
Territorial deer have small horns. The antlers are used more to drive competition out of one's territory. Doe muntjac for instance stay with the buck because he has the best patch of forest, and drives others from it, not for his pretty rack.
Elk are a herd animal, and an animal of the open spaces. Bull elk attract cows for mating and cows actually get to "choose" which bull they wish to become part of the harem of. But why big horns? Why not a good coat or large size or pretty eyes or macho bearing or any one of many other features? Over the entrails for answers.
above the same guy but when he has me in his 3D vision.
Elk horns are about milk as unlikely as it might seem, it's for bearing calves and perpetuating genes.
The time an elk mom is separated from the herd is a time of great danger from predators. Cows have a very short time to feed calves very nutritious milk so that the very precious single calf, never a twin, can grow large and swift enough to join the herd where it and it's mom are relatively safer. To feed the calf as much highly nutritious milk as possible the cow has to be very good at searching out the best foods and having enough reserves left over from the winter. Bear with me, I'm getting there.
That skill at finding food the mother elk also seeks in the genes of the bull she mates with so her calf has as good a genes as her own or even better. How to judge a bull's ability? He's wearing his advertisement on his head. Antlers are luxury items, in a year of bad grazing and poor plant life antlers will be small, if a bull is sick or old or has lots of parasites, antlers might be irregular. A bull with a large healthy rack has found excess nutrients beyond what is needed to grow and save up for the winter. The offspring from that bull will likewise be good at finding nutrients, and if the offspring is a female those nutrients mean milk to feed it's calf.
Look at some antlers. The ones that look best to you also look best to cows. Size, symmetry, the spread, those types of things are appealing to cow elk.
All info via Valerius Geist's book called Elk or something. Geist is from that old school of field biologists who would spend years watching animals. His specialty is figuring out what animals "think". Much of his stuff used to be considered controversial, I don't think any of it is any more.
The elk I mostly stopped to take photos of were the two bulls below.
They aren't locking antlers in earnest, more a matter of sparring partners keeping in shape. You can see a couple of black spots in the coats of the elk where they show up against the tan of their backs. Those are goring wounds that have healed. Typically a bull will get 50 punctures a year during the rut. Just recovering from all those wounds takes time. During the rut bull elks are not just sparring.
When I first snuck up on these elk I kept a large tree in between us. I'm very cautious with wildlife. No telling when the flight will turn into fight. To get a better photo I edged away from the tree and down the hill almost walking into the elk in the photo below who was just lying down chewing his cud.
Shooting with a camera not so hard.
Update: Thanks for the Rec. Wasn't sure if my idea of what is gorgeous would appeal to others. Even more so I'd thank whoever queued this post to Spotlight which I consider an honor, and I'm now ineligible for due to making the rec list. Thanks. I'm outdoors most of this weekend.