TULE ELK : Helicopters Are the Key to a 20th-Century Roundup as DFG Moves 200 Animals to New Home on the Range

In the early 1930s, it looked as if a species of elk that had evolved in the San Joaquin Valley, California’s coastal valleys and foothills didn’t stand a chance of making it out of the 20th Century.

California’s first inland settlers had discovered, in the mid-1800s, what biologists today estimate might have been half a million elk in and around the San Joaquin Valley. But with the gold rush, the elk were widely hunted to fill a rapidly growing demand for meat and hides. And when large-scale agricultural development began late in the 19th Century, elk habitat began to disappear rapidly.

By the early 20th Century, the last of the elk had been driven into a tiny southern corner of the San Joaquin Valley, into the marshlands--the tules--of Buena Vista Lake, and the name “tule” elk was coined. And even that wetlands area was being drained by farmers. By 1904, it was estimated that only 145 wild tule elk remained.

Over the next two decades, some of the animals were transplanted to private ranches and to some public lands, including Yosemite National Park.

In the early 1930s, on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, a wealthy Owens Valley rancher, G. Walter Dow, became interested in the desperate plight of the tule elk. He launched a campaign to have them transplanted to the Owens Valley.

In 1933, 26 elk that had previously been transplanted to Yosemite National Park were captured there and released in the Owens Valley, near Aberdeen. The following year, 28 elk from the state elk reserve at Tupman, near Bakersfield, were captured and released in the Owens Valley.

Today, tule elk, throwbacks to the 19th Century, prosper in the 75-mile-long Owens Valley, which lies between the Sierra to the west and the White and Inyo ranges to the east. In fact, the elk have prospered too well for their own good, despite marginal forage conditions.

Biologists estimate their numbers at about 600 in the Owens Valley, about 1,800 statewide, thanks to numerous, successful transplant operations. In the Owens Valley, the elk eat willows, sage, buckwheat, sedges, saltbush, quailbrush, sweet clover and wild licorice.

“This is really marginal habitat,” said veterinarian Dave Jessup of the California Department of Fish and Game. “Biology textbooks describe tule elk as a dwarf species of elk, but we’re not sure that’s really true. When you take these elk and put them in a place like Grizzly Island in the Sacaramento-San Joaquin delta, where there is excellent elk nutrition, they grow much bigger and the bulls grow much bigger antlers.”

The worst news about elk diet in the Owens Valley is that they also eat alfalfa. For decades, farmers have complained about downed fences and ravaged alfalfa fields.

Over the last two decades, DFG and volunteer teams have captured Owens Valley elk and moved them to numerous locations around the state.

Why not cull the herds through a hunting program? A lot of big game hunters wonder that, but a state law forbids the hunting of tule elk until their numbers reach 2,000, which should happen in a year or two.

Recently, the biggest roundup of tule elk ever attempted took place at three trap sites in the valley. The goal was to catch 175 to 200 elk over a two-week period and move them to two sites, the Pozo Ranch in San Luis Obispo County and the Laguna Ranch in San Benito county.

In what at times resembled a military operation, about 80 DFG personnel and volunteers were assembled, along with a helicopter, a fixed-wing spotting plane and assorted ground vehicles. Crews from an Inyo County Forest Service Conservation Camp built three traps, each a quarter mile long.

There were two weeks of 12-hour days with workers enduring dark, icy mornings, hot afternoons, and cold evenings, wind, a snowstorm and, worst of all, appalling periods of blowing dust, which all but disabled personnel with contact lenses.

This is how it went:

DAY 1, at TRAP SITE II.

Bill Clark, whose physique suggests he should be stationed behind a defensive line and catching guys carrying footballs, was instead preparing to catch some 300-pound elk, some of them with antlers.

In the dusty sagelands of the Owens Valley at dawn, Clark stood back and examined a small army of volunteers and state biologists who were applying final touches to the huge camouflaged trap site and a corral that Clark hoped would soon begin filling with elk.

“This is about as ready as we can be, I guess,” he said. “The key is the chopper driving the elk inside the outer fences. If that works, I’m pretty sure we can shut the gate on ‘em.”

Clark is a wildlife biologist for the DFG. When deer, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep or elk have to be captured and relocated anywhere in California, Clark usually is the guy dispatched to the scene. His assignment this time was one of the largest big-game capture projects in state history. Clark looked at the key ingredients--the outer fences--at Trap Site II, near Independence. The fences, each about 300 yards long, started at a point where they came within 30 yards of joining, then spread out gradually to a 200-yard-wide opening, 300 yards away. The trick was to chase the elk with the chopper inside the fencing and past the 30-yard-wide gap, where an electric gate would trap them in a corral.

The eight-foot-high fences were covered with burlap sheeting, an attempt at camouflage. It didn’t work.

The helicopter, flying as low as 10 feet off the ground, was herding a group of about 30 elk toward the trap. Don Landells, the helicopter pilot, spoke over his radio, and the dozen or so workers at the trap site with radios listened in. It sounded like a military operation, what with words like affirmative, deployment, staging area, and cavalry crackling over the air. Cavalry referred to two cowboys on horseback, waiting in the wings, should they be needed.

Landells: “OK, we have a group of animals, are you ready?”

Clarke: “Yeah, Don. Everyone is down and out of sight and the back gates are shut.”

Landells: “OK, we have a slight problem here. They don’t seem to like the looks of things.”

There was radio silence for about 10 minutes, and workers, lying hidden on the ground beneath burlap sheets, could see the helicopter flying low, blowing up considerable dust at the trap entrance.

Finally, Bob Teagle, who was to operate the electric motor that would close the gate behind the elk, spoke up, saying: “Bill, the animals are running back and forth just inside the outer fences. They’re not going to go in. Do you want a few of us to run around behind them, and try to spook them inside?”

Clark said to give it a try.

It didn’t work. The elk scattered.

Landells flew off to refuel at a nearby airport, and spoke to Clark: “Bill, I don’t think it was the outer fences that was the problem, I think it’s the back of the corral. They can’t see the horizon going straight ahead. That burlap sticks straight up. Any chance you can take the burlap off until they’re inside the gate?”

Clark answered: “Yeah, I think so--give us a few minutes to figure something out, Don.”

An hour later, about 10 workers were concealed beneath their burlap sheets, the burlap fence curtain down, ready to be jerked up again quickly with ropes.

Strike 2. A group of 30 elk was chased about four miles directly to the trap site by Landells, but when the animals were only a few yards from the outer fence, a hard wind began blowing the fence’s burlap sheeting about, causing it to whip and snap loudly on the fences. Again, the spooked elk ran in all directions.

DAY 2, at TRAP SITE III.

This trap site, about two miles east of Highway 395 near the World War II Japanese-American concentration camp at Manzanar, looked like a better prospect. Instead of being on flat land, it was in a hollow, about 12 feet below the valley floor. If elk could be funneled through the outer fences, they’d be inside the corral before they knew it.

Landells, at 7:02 a.m.: “OK, I have a group of animals on the way, about 40, couple of bulls and a calf that’s not doing so well. I’m about four miles away.”

Clark: “Good, we’re deployed, Don. Keep us posted.”

Landells, at 8:28: “OK, I have the animals at the road (a quarter mile away). They’re all pretty tired. We’re down to about 20, some of them have peeled off.”

Clark, at 8:32, whispering on the radio: “Radio silence. The animals are inside the fences.”

Clark, at 8:35: “Shut the gate! Shut the gate! OK, they’re in!”

Cheers all around.

Project crew members entered the corral and fanned out, forcing the elk to retreat to the narrow entrance of the processing area, where they were kept until they were processed by vets and loaded on trucks. The morning sun cast perfect shadows of the elk, as they trotted into the processing corral. Outside, they could be heard breathing heavily after their long run.

Another gate was shut behind them, in the processing area, and they were finally inside a corral, 25 by 25 feet. The 13 animals were nervous, and human shadows cast on the burlap fence of their corral from the east caused them to flee noisily to the corral’s other side.

Clark said: “All right, everyone stay away from the east side of them. If you have to walk that way, go far enough away so that you don’t cast a shadow.”

Dave Jessup, the state vet, climbed to the top of the fence and examined the elk. One cow had a lengthy cut on a front leg, probably suffered when the animals had to leap over a barbed wire fence. Another’s rump had been slashed by barbed wire.

“We can fix those cuts in processing,” he said. “They look like they’re in good shape. I think they’re tired enough that they’ll stay quiet for a few hours.”

After a failed attempt to herd a group of 50 more elk into the enclosure, Landells tried again and sent in a group of 20 with no difficulty. Then the processing began.

“We’re going to give them short- and long-acting antibiotics, to cover them on the truck ride to San Benito County,” Jessup said. “They’ve been stressed, and their immune systems are down. These antibiotics will prevent the shipping fever pneumonia that also affects cattle, sheep and deer.

“And they’ll each get a shot of Vitamin E, which will stimulate their immune responses. I’m also going to vaccinate them for over-eating. They’re about to undergo a drastic change of diet, from the dry sage country here to an oaklands habitat. That means new types of bacteria in their stomachs. We’ll also take blood samples and check them at the lab in Sacramento for diseases.”

Jessup and several assistants began doctoring the elk, one at a time. Each elk was coaxed through one last chute, where it was trapped tight, in Jessup’s man-powered squeeze chute. There, the elk were blindfolded, to calm them, the inoculations were completed and blood samples taken. Ear tags were attached, and a half dozen elk were fitted with radio tracking collars.

After that, they were coaxed up a loading chute and into a truck trailer, 12 feet away. Alfalfa was spread about on the floor and the animals grew surprisingly calm in confinement. Some browsed, others lay down on the alfalfa.

At 1:40 p.m., when Jessup heard on the radio that Landells was herding another group of animals to the trap site, he picked up his radio and said to Clark: “Bill, it looks questionable to me if we can process these animals before nightfall, so we’re going to be needing lights--something to start thinking about.”

Clark said: “Yeah, I know. We’ve got night lights and a generator. Now if I can just remember who’s got the lights . . . “

He remembered and the work continued. It continued, in fact, for two weeks, during which time the tule elk crew captured, processed and shipped 130 elk to their new ranges in San Luis Obispo and San Benito counties.