Go Natural: Raise Elk
(Page 3 of 4)
March/April 1971
By Victor Croley
Many of General Russ' recommendations for managing and domesticating wild game, such as deer, elk, buffalo, longhorn cattle, wild turkeys, beaver, antelope, et cetera, have been followed by state and national wild life commissions. Primary problems seem to be to provide adequate range and protection from man. After that, Nature will take its course. Supervision must be provided to prevent poaching and slaughter from renegade dogs but with this accomplished deer, antelope, elk, buffalo and other big game quickly build up until their very numbers demand harvesting to prevent loss from starvation and permanent damage to the environment.
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General Russ also found that profitable sidelines to elk ranching can be developed. Tourists and summer visitors expressed such keen interest that he was forced to keep a small herd of the stately animals penned near his home where they could be viewed as in a zoological park. Excursion trains ran from Eureka Springs to Elk Ranch and in time a small town developed with the General as first postmaster. Big game hunters eagerly paid for the privilege of bagging an elk (even a ranch-raised one!) and displaying the trophy.
Unfortunately, the General's health soon failed again and he was forced to dispose of his holdings. The new owner did not fully appreciate the opportunities: he dismissed the fence rider, the elk herd was dispersed and most of the animals soon fell before the guns of eager and unrestricted hunters. The ranch buildings were allowed to decay and little remains today except a few vine-covered mounds to mark the old foundations. Now that nearby Table Rock Lake has been formed by impounding flood waters of the White River, the thousand-acre ranch has been incorporated into a vacation and retirement development.
Archeologists interested in reconstructing the past have found proof that elk once roamed over almost all of North America from the frozen north to the near tropical regions of the Gulf states and into northern Mexico. Daniel Boone killed elk in Kentucky and Ohio in the 1780's. The earliest settlers along the Cumberland eagerly hunted elk, and the frontiersmen found them in the Ozarks and as far west as Oklahoma and the Indian Territory.
Biologists tell us that elk were originally plains animals and at one time—perhaps thousands of years ago—outnumbered even the immense herds of buffalo that often blackened the prairie. It is believed that the elk were decimated and forced into rough, hilly mountain fastnesses by the pressure of hunting. Early man preferred elk meat, (just as do today's hunters) and the big, unwary creatures were more easily killed than the small, agile deer. Elk skins made clothing and tent coverings and the meat from one kill would supply a family for several days. Even the bones and antlers were used in toolmaking and weaponry. It is probable that early man followed and lived on the elk herds just as later Indians followed the buffalo herds and as Eskimo follow and harvest the caribou. Indeed, General Russ demonstrated that elk can be tamed and domesticated just as easily as the reindeer or the musk ox and probably, because of their size, much more profitably.
