Guide to the Wapiti Elk

By David Petersen
Published on September 1, 1986
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PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
The bugling of the bull elk during autumn rut is a magnificent sound from a soprano vibrato falling to sharp grunts.

Getting to know our most regal ungulate, the wapiti elk. 

Guide to the Wapiti Elk

From my mountaintop cabin’s door, it’s maybe 1,000 yards across a little river valley to the patchwork of verdant meadows and chalk white aspen groves that make up Old Rube’s summertime stamping grounds. Where he disappears to during winter I can only guess. Perhaps the wapiti elk wanders the 15 miles and 1,500 vertical feet down out of the high country to the easier pickings along the sheltered bottoms of the river, as do so many others of his kind. Or maybe Old Rube simply holes up somewhere back in the dark pine and fir forests that gird his summertime meadows and groves.

I call the old bull elk Rube because of the sleek rubescence of his summertime coat. There are other elk to spy on (through 7X binoculars) as they feed at the cool edges of day in those meadows over yonder-sometimes as many as a dozen cows, calves, and spike bulls. But the big red harem master is far and away the most striking; against the distance-darkened green of the meadows, Old Rube shines under the morning sun like a rich red jewel in an Ethiope’s ear.

This big bull wapiti elk — just one of many hereabouts — is a prime example of why the elkor wapiti (from an Algonquian word meaning “white rump”) — has been called “the monarch of the West.” The moose is larger, the grizzly bear more powerful, the cougar more mysterious, and the whitetail more graceful. But the bull wapiti, with his proud posture, trumpeted call to arms, and rich, tricolored pelage, is certainly the most regal of North America’s great wild creatures. And his crowning glory is a magnificent rack of antlers.

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