Elk Viewing in Rocky Mtn. Nat. Park

The Rut’s On, and the Crowds Descend

By Richard Martin, 10-03-06

	It's not easy being a rock star.

After camping at the Moraine Park campground, in Rocky Mountain National Park, on Saturday night, we hiked the next day about a quarter-mile on the Cub Lake Trail to where a large bedrock outcrop juts out into the vast flat meadow of the Moraine Park valley. Along with my son and a few of his first-grade friends I clambered up on the boulders and walked out to the furthest overlook. Scattered before us was a wildlife tableau unequalled anywhere outside the Serengeti: a huge elk herd, hanging out down on the flatlands for the annual fall rut.

The mating season in RMNP has become a hugely popular show, and the final weekend in September, blessed with gorgeous fall weather (not to mention an off week for the Broncos), may have been the busiest ever for the park, according to public information officer Kyle Patterson.

The drama witnessed by the thousands of visitors to the park is like a primal version of high school, with hooves and antlers. There's an alpha bull elk, graced with a magnificent set of antlers, who controls his harem of females with avid jealousy, running off any lesser males who venture nearby. The harem, consisting of dozens of females of eligible age plus a few young elk, born in the early summer, lounge or graze nearby. Periodically the bull cranes his powerful neck and emits his strange, keening bugle. Other males stand off at a distance, watching with infinite (and unrewarded) patience. As the season progresses, the lesser males engage in ritual conflict, literally locking antlers for hours at a time.

The bugling goes on all night; lying in the tent, waking periodically deep in the night, you can hear the haunting cries echo from the mountainsides. It's a spectacle that never grows old, and it draws increasing numbers of spectators every year.

"It's like a tailgate party," comments Patterson. "People bring their blankets and their wine and cheese and they spend the whole day. They're out there till the sun goes down."

The increasing popularity of the elk rut has presented the rangers with a serious crowd-control problem. Many visitors, oblivious to the lines of traffic behind them and to their own safety, simply park their vehicles in the middle of the road and stand gawking on the shoulder. Others wander into the meadows, far too closely to the huge, territorial animals.

Assisting the rangers this time of year is a group of volunteers known as the Elk Bugle Corps, many of whom come from nearby Estes Park, others from Boulder or Golden or Denver. From late August to mid-October they show up to help the park with traffic, keeping people away from elk, checking in campers, and so forth. Without them it's hard to imagine what the mob scene would look like.

On the return part of our hike we watched the lead bull corral a couple of wayward females who had wandered away from the main herd, dangerously close to a couple of young males. Bugling, craning his neck in the characteristic "herding" posture, and staring down his young rivals, the bull drove the females back toward the herd. In the distance his bugles were answered by other males in a polyphonic chorus. When the females slowed he began trotting behind them, and they picked up the pace to a moderate gallop. He turned and, triumphantly, glared back at the cowed outliers. They went back to grazing, as if to say, "Who, us?" He turned and trotted back toward his harem, haughty and serene.

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