2007 is our fifth season as volunteers in the Elk Bugle Corps in the park. We've committed Thursday evenings this year from the last week in August through mid-October. It's about an hour's drive each way, so we sometimes stay overnight, rather than drive home in the dark. We often go up early enough for a hike, or to take pictures of elk, fall colors, and anything else of particular interest. Most of these pictures were taken during days before we started our volunteer duty. Some were made during quiet times on the job.
Elk Bugle Corps volunteers serve three basic functions:
Trees on Bierstadt Lake trail, Sept 20, 2006
In the following picture groups, click on thumbnails for a larger image. Click and hold to move. Use arrow keys for subsequent/previous images.You can click on other thumbnails without closing the previous image.
This row has more trees on the Bierstadt Lake Trail and several young elk.
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"Where's the bull?" Everyone wants to find the bull leading his harem of 30 cows and youngsters. That's where they focus their long lenses, too.
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The black bull on the right above has been wallowing in mud, at least partly created using his own urine. While it looks disgusting to us, the color and odor apparently enhance sex appeal for elk. We were fortunate to find one elk working on this enhancement, seen in the pictures below. He seemed to be having a good time, tossing mud and other stuff with his antlers, etc.
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A herd on a hillside, a bull lounging right outside the Moraine Park Museum (long lens not needed), two bulls sparring in Horseshoe Meadows, and a coyote that enjoyed pestering the herd and had to be run by the elk off several times.
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We were assigned to "early rove" every time in 2007. That means we show up an hour ahead of the rest of the Bugle Corps volunteers and possibly take on special jobs for the evening. In one case in 2006, that meant closing Hollowell Park in preparation for a helicopter landing to evacuate a heart attack victim. In another, we tackled a traffic jam on the road into Moraine Park caused by a roadside elk herd. At one point, we cleared a large parking space so the herd could cross the road.
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The elk and people don't get all of our attention. Here are some Gray Jays at Bierstadt Lake and a Black-billed Magpie and Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel (which we did not feed!) along the Cub Lake trail. Finally, there is a view of clouds gathering over the peaks seen from the Cub Lake trail during the day before we did our volunteer stint in snow flurries.
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We enjoyed a hike to Gem Lake, with gorgeous colors and Townsend's Solitaires singing everywhere. Not all the interesting times are in the park proper. There's an elk herd that resides in Estes Park. They make good use of Lake Estes, the picnic grounds along the shore, and the golf course. One bull lounged peacefully among the picnic tables, while another took his entire harem into the lake.
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 Elk herd in Lake Estes. |
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