No Horns of Dilemma : California’s Tule Elk, Once Near Extinction, Are Here to Stay

As the green pickup truck bounces slowly over the dusty road, toward several large tule elk grazing in a meadow, the animals turn and stare cautiously, but show no signs of fear.

Maury Morning Star drives on, and the bull elk, some with impressive antlers, resume grazing.

Soon they will drop their antlers and start growing new ones. In the spring, the females will begin calving, and in the heat of summer, during the rutting season, the strongest male will bugle loudly to warn the smaller bulls that he is the master and that the cows are his and his only.

Antlers are sure to tangle.

Such is life for the 28 tule elk confined to the Tule Elk State Reserve, a 956-acre spread of flat grassland and a few small marshes, surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of cotton fields and cattle ranches.

And such is life for Morning Star, of the Department of Parks and Recreation, who takes visitors on prearranged tours over the reserve and whose job it is to see that no harm comes to the animals.

For the visitor, it might seem a sad state of affairs for the elk to have to live behind a fence after thriving in this region in much the way bison once roamed the Great Plains.

But fence or no, they still have the chance to drop their antlers in favor of new and larger ones, to bring little tule elk into the world and, for some anyway, to mate with female tule elk.

“They do OK,” Morning Star says.

And because they do, so do free-roaming herds of tule elk throughout California.

Since it opened in 1932, Tule Elk State Reserve has been supplying elk for the California Department of Fish and Game’s reintroduction program, which has succeeded in bringing the animals back from possibly as few as two in the late 1800s to nearly 3,000 in 22 herds scattered throughout California.

“The fact that there are more than 2,700 animals now is pretty remarkable,” says Jon Fischer, elk project coordinator for the DFG. “Especially when you consider that we had very few elk at one point in time--definitely less than 20, maybe less than 10 and maybe only two. I doubt that there are too many other animals on earth that have gotten down that low in numbers that have recovered.”

*

Tule elk, one of three subspecies of elk in California, used to roam the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys by the thousands, some belonging to herds as large as 2,000. Their range extended from Butte County north of Sacramento to Buena Vista Lake near Bakersfield in Kern County, and from the foothills of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada across the Great Valley to the coastal mountain ranges.

An account in 1850 by a hiker walking from Stockton to Mariposa told of “bands of elk, deer and antelope in such numbers that they actually darkened the plains for miles, and looked in the distance like great herds of cattle.”

But by then, the tule elks’ demise had already begun.

The “fur-brigades,” starting in 1827, had made a substantial impact on the animals. But it was the Gold Rush in 1848, and the influx of settlers it generated, that brought the animals to the brink of extinction.

Cattle prices rose steadily during the period, and cheaper elk meat became increasingly popular among settlers and miners.

Rather than waste ammunition on the animals, some hunters, or vaqueros , would ride alongside huge herds of fleeing elk and bring them down one by one with a swipe across the hind legs with a long-handled machete, or luna .

By 1850, the herds of the Sacramento Valley were completely wiped out.

And not long after, only a small herd remained in California, in the tule marshes near Buena Vista Lake. But hunters were relentless, pursuing the animals in boats with lookouts atop a ladder on the mast to see over the tules.

Draining of the reservoirs for agricultural development further exposed the animals, and by 1870 the tule elk subspecies--later identified as such--appeared to have ceased to exist.

But in 1875, two tule elk--possibly the last pair--were sighted in the marshes near Buena Vista Lake on the Miller and Lux Ranch. Henry Miller, by ordering his employees to protect the tule elk on his ranch, began a process that would eventually enable the animals to recover.

The elk on Miller and Lux reproduced and the herd grew rapidly; then in 1904, the two ranchers offered part of the herd to the government. The offer was accepted and the first elk roundup and drive was organized.

Not long after the drive was under way, the first elk stampede occurred.

According to an account in The Times in 1905, the animals cooperated until they neared a pen, at which time “the wildest terror prevailed, and the herd stampeded, heading for the hills. Once there, all the work of the vaqueros would count for naught.

“Throwing caution to the wind, they spurred their cow ponies on in pursuit to head them off. Failing in this, some had recourse to their lassos, and in a few minutes a dozen or more of the animals were roped.”

Once in the pen, which was surrounded by dozens of onlookers, they began “hurling themselves against the fence and against each other one minute, then huddling together in abject terror the next.”

Several died in the fury, and of the handful of animals that made it into the railroad cars, only one would survive the trip to the government’s pen in Sequoia National Park on the Kaweah River.

But by 1914, the Miller and Lux herd had grown to 400 animals, and they caused such damage to the alfalfa fields and fences that small groups of animals were shipped to other locations.

Miller died in 1917, and the property was subdivided into smaller ranches, whose farmers eventually petitioned the government for relief from elk depredation on their lands.

“The fact of the matter is that tule elk have a very large home range--they’ll wander a great distance,” DFG coordinator Fischer says. “They don’t respect fences. They don’t respect agricultural crops in any way shape or form . . . and that sets the stage for conflict.”

In 1932, the State Tule Elk Reserve was established, and about 175 animals on the former Miller and Lux were given a home. From there, some were moved to start new homes for California’s smallest of three subspecies of elk, reaching weights of about 600 pounds.

Tule Elk State Reserve became “the source,” according to Fischer.

More than 400 tule elk have been relocated from Tule Elk State Reserve since it opened, one as recently as last summer to add a bull to another herd that had been plagued by poachers. The herd in the Owens valley has about 400 elk. The largest, near San Luis Obispo, numbers about 600, and Fischer said its range could soon extend to the point where it merges with another herd farther north.

“It’s clear we’re not going to have 500,000 tule elk in California ever again,” Fischer says. “There’s no chance of that. But we’re in a heck of a lot better shape now than we were 20 years ago, or than we were 120 years ago.”

Relocation is much easier now through the use of tranquilizer guns and helicopter transports, but finding suitable habitat remains a chief obstacle in expanding the herds, which are currently managed through controlled hunts.

Still, with the help of such groups as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Nature Conservancy and Safari Club, enough money has been raised and habitat found to put the animals back on the map, so to speak.

*

Morning Star, driving his green pickup back toward the office near the front gate of the reserve, approaches several female tule elk and a few spike bulls that had moved in to mingle. Their heads all turn at once to watch him drive past.

He tells of the time several elk once jumped over the 7-foot fence surrounding the reserve, but when approached by park personnel, they jumped back over.

“I really believe that the elk know they’re safe here,” Morning Star says, “because I’ve seen where people come up to the viewing area and they’ll be literally feet away from the animal, and the animal just walks like nothing is wrong, right past the people. But if you get on the other side of the fence like we did, they just take off--they won’t let you near them.”

Who can blame them?