As a crowd of onlookers gathered on a bike path along a nine-hole golf course in Estes Park on a brisk morning in late September, Rodney Ford peered through a magnifying scope attached to a tripod. He was focused on a magnificent bull elk that was sitting in the shade of pine trees on the ninth hole beside the Big Thompson River, surrounded by three dozen females that the herd bull was anxious to impregnate.
Ford and his wife had driven from Shreveport, La., spending the night in a van parked nearby, to witness the annual drama of elk rutting season in one of Colorado’s favorite mountain towns.
“I drove 16 hours just for this right here,” drawled Ford, who was situated about 100 yards from the herd. “We come here every year. This is what we do. We travel in that van, me and my wife; we go all over the United States looking at wildlife.”
Fall was in the air, with scarcely a cloud in the sky, and fresh snow was visible high on the north face of Longs Peak. Four miles from the Beaver Meadows entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, enthralled visitors listened for the herd bull to bugle, which he often did. They wondered if they would get to see him hook up with a female, or maybe defend his turf if another bull dared intrude into his domain.
Occasionally the bull would sit nearly nose-to-nose with one female or another, seemingly staring into their eyes.
“They’re just so amazing, big majestic animals,” Ford marveled. “They come here out of the mountains to rut every year. Look at this, one bull with 35 cows, one bull controlling this whole herd. They will do what he says. He can push them anywhere he wants to push them.”
Then Ford noticed another bull “lying down yonder,” about 70 yards from the herd. Too close for the boss of the herd.
“That bull is trying to get to this herd,” Ford said, “but (the herd bull) won’t let him.”
The herd bull began walking toward the would-be interloper, which quickly backed off, but two other bulls were hanging out over near the bike path. While the herd bull was focused on the first interloper, one of the bulls by the bike path thought he saw an opportunity and jumped a wooden pole fence to get onto the golf course. When the herd bull turned his attention that way and began approaching, the second interloper jumped back over the fence.
Such is the drama that unfolds at the town’s nine-hole course, which closes during rutting season, and in Rocky Mountain National Park every autumn. That same morning, another herd gathered about a mile east of the Beaver Meadows entrance to the park, attracting onlookers who pulled their cars onto the shoulder to snap pictures with phones and cameras. Still another herd gathered near the Moraine Park Campground.
There is more to the ritual of rutting season than watching elk, though. An amusing sideshow comes from watching the people who come to watch the elk. Some of them tempt fate, getting way too close despite warnings to keep their distance. A Colorado Parks and Wildlife sign posted at the bike path by the golf course makes that clear.
“Warning: Aggressive elk present,” the sign says. “Although they can appear and behave tamely, elk can be aggressive in some situations,” Ford said. “During the calving season (in spring, or during the rut), elk can be especially uncomfortable with the presence of humans.”
That didn’t stop many from approaching a bull hiding in some trees next to the bike path to take selfies, mere feet from that warning sign. One cyclist who rode by muttered, “You guys are too close. They’ll charge you if they feel like it.”
Last week, a bull rammed a car near the town’s other golf course, an 18-hole layout about a mile away that remains open during rutting season. Folks in Estes Park have a word for visitors who get too close to the elk, or stop their cars in traffic: “tourons,” as in tourist morons.
“People just stop on the roads,” said Wendy Rigby, a longtime resident and former editor of the Estes Park Trail-Gazette who is a spokeswoman for the town’s hospital, Estes Park Health. “We have elk jams, so when you drive to work, you have to be careful. People are like, ‘Oh, there’s an elk,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, there are elk everywhere; just go to the golf course.’ If you’re going to stop, that’s fine, but pull off. You can’t just stop in the middle of a street or highway.”
Scott Chew has been an emergency physician at the hospital for 27 years and is its trauma director, so knows about the frequency and casualties of elk attacks.
“Some years there are several; some years there are none,” Chew said. “I haven’t tabulated them, but I sense that the average is one or two elk-related visits per year to the emergency department. There have been only one or two where someone was gored, like pierced with an antler. The most common thing would be getting head-butted or stomped by a cow elk protecting a baby, especially in the spring and summer. Of course, there are people who hit an elk with their motor vehicle or a motorcycle once in awhile. One of our ambulances hit an elk last week. No one was injured.”
Sometimes people get injured fleeing an approaching elk.
“They do like a sham charge, where they rush you and stop,” Chew said. “People run off a retaining wall or a deck or stairs trying to get away from them and get hurt falling down.”
Elk attacks in Rocky Mountain National Park are rare, according to Kyle Patterson, the park’s public affairs officer. “We put a lot of things in place to try to avoid that as much as possible,” Patterson said.
In addition to ranger staff, the park has a group of 65 volunteers called the Elk Bugle Corps, who station themselves in elk-viewing areas to “keep visitors safe from elk and elk safe from visitors,” Patterson said.
“Oftentimes people will say, ‘How close can I get to wildlife?’ We say people should be asking a different question: ‘How far should I stay back?’ ” Patterson said. “If you get so close that the wildlife reacts to your presence, then it’s too late, you’ve already reached that threshold. Wildlife might leave the area, or change their behavior.”
The park also imposes closures in meadows during September and October from 5 p.m. until 10 a.m. to protect elk herds. Onlookers must remain on roadways during those times.
“We do everything we can to keep elk safe from visitors,” Patterson said. “It depends on the time of the rut as well. When you get toward the end of rut season, many of the large bulls are exhausted. They’ve lost a lot of their body weight. It can be a very intense, stressful time for many of the large bulls. They often have less patience and can be more aggressive. We certainly hear of situations where elk will move toward a human or act in an aggressive way. Oftentimes they give a warning, but sometimes they don’t. They’re unpredictable.”
That didn’t stop people at the nine-hole golf course from jumping a fence and hiking down a social trail along the river that brought them dangerously close to the herd. Dozens of people did, even mothers with small children in strollers.
“Those people are so stupid,” said Lauren Annett, who was in town from Pennsylvania for a wedding.
One mom with two little kids walked across the golf course. So did two men walking their dogs, one tossing a Frisbee. This was shortly after one of the cows began to stray from the herd, not far from where the fence-jumping elk was sitting, and the herd elk quickly made sure she turned around.
“He’s like, ‘You’d better not look that way at that other bull,” said Angie Shudran, who came down from Rock Springs, Wyo., with her husband for the show.
Rick Fansler, who came from Tampa, Fla., was shooting photos and video in hopes of recording the bull bugling.
“I’ve been here probably every year for the past six years,” Fansler said. “I live in Florida. It’s 95 degrees there right now. I come here and see the beautiful mountains, and (feel) the air. I love it. The temperature is perfect.”
Rhett and Kim Sinclair came from Aiken, S.C., to visit a niece and nephew in Colorado Springs, who suggested an elk-watching trip to Estes Park while they were here.
“It’s amazing,” Kim Sinclair said. “It’s neat how they take care of their herd to keep them all together.”
Her husband was hoping to see a skirmish between bulls.
“A hockey game (brawl); that’s what I want to see,” he said with amusement. “I live in the South.”
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