Elk in September

Arose well before dawn for the drive to Pennsylvania’s elk range and got on the road shortly afterwards. First stop was at the doughnut shop for a large coffee with skin milk and extra sugar as well as a cinnamon-raisin bagel. Then it was on the road passing a few houses where lights glowed and seeing some other early-risers who were also on the road.

Arrived at my destination during morning nautical twilight (when the horizon is visible but objects on the ground are not easily distinguished), just before what photographers call the “blue hour”. Parked the car and headed up the hill on an old road through a typical early morning fog. On the hill’s crest a spike bull elk grazed –

And dew spangled a spider’s web –

Then over the crest and down the other side where the old road ran through woods and paralleled a small stream. On the other side of the stream was a strip of woods and then a large grassy field.

A bull elk bugled from the wooded strip, but couldn’t be seen so I walked further down the hill and then across the stream to the edge of the field, where –

There were seven bull elk, three with branched antlers and four with only spikes, a bachelor group whose bulls hadn't been able to gather a harem and thus weren't going to be the sires of next year's calves. Even so one of the larger bulls dominated the younger animals –

After watching and photographing these elk for a while I looked around and saw a much larger bull with wide-spreading antlers, apparently the one that had bugled, walking into the field. He passed within about 150 feet, seeming to ignore the mere human who was photographing him –

It looked like he’d been pretty well battered in a fight with another bull, with two puncture wounds that match the spacing of an elk’s brow tines and having lost a large patch of hair. Oh to have seen that battle.

After he walked past me, he headed straight for the other bulls who kept their distance and gave him a fairly wide berth. They all headed across the clearing and up the far hillside –

All the elk disappeared into the forest, there to spend the day resting and ruminating. As for me, I decided to head into the 50,000 acre Quehanna Wild Area to scout for signs of other elk activity.

A little over one hundred years ago the last of the Quehanna’s valuable white pine and hemlock timber had been cut, some logs floated down the streams to the sawmills, but most hauled by logging railroads. Forest fires followed the logging, the land was sold to become part of two state forests, and the regenerating forest was vastly different. Some of the old pine stumps persist, but are gradually succumbing to fungi (and tree roots) –

While in other places there are old trees, like this white oak, that obviously spent years growing in the open while younger trees came up around them –

There were eight small subsistence farms in the area, none of which lasted very long due to infertile soils and a short growing season. Several of those open areas are now managed for wildlife, including elk.

The old farms aren’t the only open areas, in some places trees never returned after the fires that followed the original logging, while other openings are abandoned beaver ponds. There are active beaver colonies as well –

A few scattered openings were planted to conifers –

But probably 90% of Quehanna is occupied by a mix of oak, maple, aspen and birch of varying ages –

‘Nough of Quehanna, it was getting late in the afternoon and time to head back to where I’d seen the bull elk in the morning. So it was up the hill, over the top and down to the clearing.

Patience is a necessity for wildlife photographers, a quality I don’t possess in any quantity so I moved to three different places in the course of the hour it took for the elk to make their evening appearance. But appear they did; and, except for this yearling, they were closer to where I'd first sat on the edge of the opening – oh well!

Then it was the end of day, not enough light for photos, time to head home.