Monarch of the West Wapiti

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Imagine hauling those dimensions through jungles of aspen and lodgepole pine at a dead run on a moonless night! No wonder elk instinctively hold their heads high when on the move — to position their antlers along their backs and minimize the amount of forest that gets clear-cut as they go.

Bull elk wear some form of antlers practically year-round. The cycle begins (or ends, depending on your view of such chicken-egg quandaries) in March with the casting (shedding) of the previous season's crown. When the old antlers are ready to fall, any impact or sudden movement of the head can cause the heavy beams to drop. Only rarely will both sides detach simultaneously, a situation that leaves the half-cast bull with a lopsided outlook on life — a problem he may attempt to remedy by spearing the tip of the surviving antler into the ground and twisting his neck until the offending appendage pops off.

Old Rube might weigh 800 pounds (or more) on the hoof.

Buds of new growth appear on the pedicels (two permanent bumps on a cervid's skull from which antlers sprout) soon after a bull casts his previous season's crown. The fresh antlers grow rapidly through the summer and attain full size by late July or early August. After rubbing off the skinlike velvet and polishing his new headgear to an ivory shine, the monarch of the West is ready to face the many challenges of the autumn rut.

It's a chill, late-August evening in the high country. I'm out front splitting firewood when an eerie melody comes drifting across the valley, its notes so sharp and high they cut right through the rhythmic knocking of my axe. I recognize the tune immediately and smile; there will be no more work this evening. I lean my axe up against the little pile of aspen splits, wipe the sweat from my face, and wait.

After a while the serenade is repeated — a throat-clearing tremolo stretching into a taut alto, wavering up to a soprano vibrato — sustained — then falling of rapidly in pitch and volume like a cry snatched away by the wind; the finale is a triad of sharp grunts.

No mistaking that voice. It's Old Rube heralding the coming of autumn. Again I smile, knowing that for the next several weeks the resonant bugling of Old Rube and other neighborhood bulls will fire my imagination, invade my dreams, revitalize my spirit.

I am drawn to that wild sound as a homesick sailor to a beckoning Siren's song. Autumn after autumn, morning after morning, I eagerly abandon the warmth of my bed to plunge into the dark chill depths of the surrounding forest . . . straining to make my movements as imperceptible as the passage of time, as quiet as meditation; my senses marking each flit of wing, every rustle of leaf; dampened nostrils testing chill morning breezes for the musky barnyard odor that tells me I'm near a bull elk in rut.

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