Listening in elk habitat

Morning mist hung low in the sky as a dozen elk ran across a clearing. A similarly sized herd of Museum members held our breath and grinned at our good luck. It was luck 3 billion years in the making.

All morning we’d been listening intently. The Museum has been hosting this annual Sounds of the Elk field trip since long before I arrived on the scene. First it was Laine Stowell who used his bulky radio telemetry equipment to locate collared cow elk and lead us down the logging roads to get close to a herd. He’d pause occasionally to use the receiver dangling around his neck, then he’d mew like a cow or bugle like a bull. Some years a haunting, high-pitched trumpet would echo through the woods in reply. In many years, silence.