Monarch of the West Wapiti

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The Roosevelt elk of our northern Pacific coast is the largest of the four North American races, with adults averaging a good hundred pounds heavier than their Rocky Mountain brethren. (A Roosevelt herd transplanted in 1927 to Alaska's Afognak Island — near Kodiak — has produced bulls in the 1,200-pound range.) Strangely, the big Roosevelt's antlers are smaller than those of the Rocky Mountain subspecies, though they may carry more points.

An estimated 1,300 to 1,500 Tule elk survive today in pockets of habitat in central and northern California. Sometimes called the dwarf elk, the Tule is the smallest of the four North American species, with bulls averaging 550 pounds, cows just over 400.

No matter the species, the most striking physical feature of the wapiti is the treelike headgear worn by the bulls; even yearling males usually manage to sprout single-beam spikes averaging 16 inches in length. But elk antlers generally don't reach their full splendor until the fifth growth cycle, by which time most bulls sport racks with six tines per side on beams four feet and more in length. Although a bull will often survive well into his teens, his antlers will attain maximum size by around ten years of age.

Records? In his Journal of a Trapper 1834-1843, Osborne Russell reports that, while encamped on a branch of the Gallatin River in "Yellow Stone" country, his party of mountain men "killed the fattest Elk I ever saw. It was a large Buck the fat on his rump measured seven inches thick he had 14 spikes or branches on the left horn and 12 on the right."

Unbelievable? Perhaps. As a class, mountain men were renowned stretchers of the truth. Nonetheless, Osborne Russell later became one of the first sworn judges in Oregon Territory and was lauded as "a mature man of high character and good works." I believe him. Additionally, Dr. Phillip Wright — professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Montana and chairman of the records committee for the Boone and Crockett Club (the largest of the two U.S. organizations that score and rank big game trophies) — told me that he has no trouble accepting Russell's report of a 14 X 12 monarch in Yellowstone 150 years ago.

The current Boone and Crockett record for typical Rocky Mountain elk antler tines is 10 X 9. (I specify typical because, due to freak genetic factors or antler injury during growth, some cervids carry atypical racks having large numbers of small, somewhat deformed points.) The wapiti rack considered by the Boone and Crockett Club to be the overall grandest in existence is a "mere" 8 X 7 typical, taken by a meat hunter away back in 1899 near Crested Butte, Colorado. The right beam is 55-5/8 inches long, the left goes 59-5/8 inches, and the tip-to-tip spread is 45-1/2 inches.

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