Hungry elk frustrate landowners and wildlife managers

 
BUFFALO — Wyoming is grappling with how to keep enough elk on the landscape to wow wildlife enthusiasts and fill hunt- ers' freezers while preventing them from overpopulating and devouring too much forage.
 
It's a delicate balance, one that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is attempting to address with hunting quotas and seasons and the Wyoming Legislature is looking to address through legislation.
 
Three groups of elk roam Johnson County and the region broadly, including the Fortification, South Bighorn and North Bighorn herds.
 
These herds are each above objective, primarily because elk are camping out on private lands and therefore are largely unavailable to hunters, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's 2022 Job Completion Report, which details the management status of big game in each region. 
 
According to the report, the Fortification herd, which primarily exists in the northeast corner of Johnson County into Campbell County, has only a few hundred elk to begin with but is 171% above objective. The North Bighorn and South Bighorn herds each are estimated to have more than 5,000 (18% above objective) and nearly 4,000 (12% above objective), respectively.
 
Elk's opportunistic nature and adaptability hinder both hunters hoping to fill their tags and ranchers whose properties sustain damage, according to the department's Buffalo biologist Zach Turnbull. This species differs from other ungulates in its ability to live and thrive in nearly any habitat, from open prairie to high-elevation forest, he said. So during hunting season, they've been staying in areas where they can avoid hunting pressure and get a decent meal.
 
“The old way of looking at it is the bigger the mouth they have, the more adaptable they are and the more things they can eat," Turnbull said. "Take a mule deer: they're more selective and more sensitive, and browse; forbs and shrubs are more critical to them. Elk can make it just about anywhere, and they can live on grass." 
 
That, plus this ecosystem and its lack of predators  wolves or grizzly bears  mean elk thrive on the landscape. 
 
So hunting is Game and Fish's most effective management tool, and the department tries to meet population objectives through changing hunting season dates and lengths, license types and quotas, and hunt area boundaries. 
 
Where Turnbull works in the southern Bighorns, he said, there are 700 more licenses for antlerless elk now than there were 10 years ago, and 50 to 100 more for any elk or bull elk. Harvest success, or how many hunters are able to fill their tags, varies from year to year, though Wyoming tends to lead the nation in how successful elk hunters are, even in a bad year, Turnbull said.
 
“As far as hunter success for active hunters, the last two years have certainly been at the bottom of that," partly due to drought and weather that pushes the animals around, Turnbull said.
 
Another big part of elk management, especially on the face of the Bighorns (where land is primarily privately owned) is access.
 
Hunting opportunities vary on private land depending on whether landowners participate in the department's Access YES program or offer outfitting services. While a lot of landowners – namely livestock producers – can benefit from keeping too many elk from camping on their land due to both forage and disease concerns, there are still some who are perfectly happy housing hundreds or a thousand head of elk on their land, Turnbull said. 
 

 
And others may want to rid themselves of some cervids but don't feel it is worth it to deal with hunters on their property.
 
Another tool that Game and Fish has used on public land is habitat treatment to generate more feed for elk to hopefully attract them.
 
Absent forcing off elk from private land, the Wyoming Legislature's Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources Interim Committee proposed legislation that would establish a damage compensation program for forage lost to elk.
 
The legislation, backed by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, would reimburse ranchers for forage lost to elk, calculated based on the number of elk and how long they were there, converted to animal unit months. The AUM rate would be based on the fair market rate as provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
 
Game and Fish would pay 150% of that rate after investigation and monitoring. It would also work to move elk off the property through hazing or hunting seasons as possible, Game and Fish Chief Game Warden Rick King told the ag committee during its meeting on Oct. 31. 
 
“We could straightforwardly incorporate this into our existing damage program," King said.
 
Most of the department's existing programs would reimburse the entirety of the damage cost, but this additional percentage covers hard-to-quantify collateral expenses, such as having to move cattle or reduce a herd. 
 
The bill did not have a fiscal impact estimate at this point. Funding that goes toward paying damage claims comes out of license sales and application fees, King said.
 
Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the state's stock growers association, said that ultimately this reimbursement system is not the answer to managing excess elk populations throughout Wyoming. Instead, it's important to prioritize hunting  both in and out of season.
 
Last year, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission adopted more effective auxiliary management hunting seasons, or supplemental hunting seasons meant to address exactly this issue. 
 
When the department cannot meet its harvest goals for any species during normal hunting seasons and licensure, a special season could be the answer.
 
Magagna and the stock growers association backed that measure last year, and he said that this past winter, landowners were issued hunting licenses and the department took a number of elk that were processed and donated to the first lady's hunger initiative. 
 
Overall, while the issue is one that particularly plagues southeastern Wyoming, private landowners across the state, including in the northeast, are losing forage to overpopulated elk herds, Magagna said. 
 
“Any remedy we identify has to be able to work in all of the areas where this is a problem," he said.
 
This story was published on December 14, 2023.