Fort Clatsop Elk

Fort Clatsop Description

On 4 February 1806, while wintering over at Fort Clatsop, Clark observed:

the Elk are in much better order in the point near the praries [on Point Adams] than they are in the woody country around us or up the Netul [Lewis and Clark River] in the praries they feed on grass and rushes, considerable quantities of which are yet green and succulent, in the woods country their food is huckleberry bushes, fern, and an evergreen shrub [possibly salal, Gaultheria shallon]; . . . the last constitutes the greater part of their food and grows abundantly through all the timbered country, particularly the hillsides and more broken parts of it.

On 12 March 1806 he continued:

The horns of some of the Elk have not yet fallen off and those of others have Grown to a length of six inches. The latter are in the best order, from which it would seem that the pore [thin, seasonally undernourished] Elk retain their horns longer.

He misspoke. Antlers are solid; horns—such as bighorn sheep have—are hollow.

The size of a bull elk’s antlers is an indication of his health and strength, and of his capacity to sire similarly hardy offspring. Antlers also are handy weapons when the need arises to defend one’s territory and one’s harem of female elk (cows) during the fall rutting (breeding) season.

Antlers, bony growths from large burrs high on the head, are shed each year in March, and re-grown between May and August. During the growth period they are covered with a velvety skin (see photo below) containing blood vessels that carry the necessary nourishment. When the antlers are fully grown the velvet is scraped off by rubbing against young trees, especially red alder, which imparts a rich mahogany stain to the bone that would otherwise be an ivory color. In the video above we see a young bull rinsing away the last remnant of his spent velvet in a river.

Standing about five feet tall at the shoulders, Roosevelt elk are somewhat shorter than Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni), but mature Roosevelt bulls may weigh as much as 1,000 pounds.

An elk’s life expectancy ranges from 14 to 26 years. Males mature at two years of age, but do not challenge other bulls until age four or five. The elk “in velvet” pictured above, photographed in early summer, carries four tines, or “points,” on each branch of his antlers.

Naming the Elk

Elk once roamed throughout the continental United States, but by the end of the 18th century they had been forced out of eastern regions. The Corps encountered their first elk in the western part of the present state of Missouri, and killed their last one, en route home, near today’s Kansas City. Today elk are found throughout the Rocky Mountains, as well as in Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and several other eastern states.

In 1898 the American biologist C. Hart Merriam first described the elk found in the coastal rain forest. He identified it as a subspecies, and named it in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, who was an accomplished amateur naturalist and ardent conservationist.

Some say that the American elk is no elk at all. “Elk” derives from the German “elch” referring to the European moose. But “elk” was apparently adapted for its current use long before Lewis and Clark. In 1806, however, the Shawnee Indian name “wapiti” was proposed as the official one, to avoid the old confusion. The Indian name is made up of words meaning “white” and “deer,” apparently referring to the light coloration of some animals, or to the whitish rump of both sexes.

Early taxonomists identified the elk as Cervus elaphus, the same species as the European red deer. Derived from Latin and Greek terms that both mean “deer,” the name may suggest that our “elk” are indeed the “deer of all deer.” In the mid-1880’s biologists sparked decades of controversy by concluding that the American elk was a distinct species, deserving of its own name, Cervus canadensus—”deer of Canada.” This name may have been drawn from another early designation for the noble animal, the “Canada stag.”

C. Hart Merriam went a step further, concluding that elk of North America included as many as six distinct species. His theory did not earn wide support, though the species he described were eventually accepted as sub-species. But that did not put an end to the debate about red deer versus elk. It lasted into the 1970’s when it was finally agreed that red deer and American elk were identical, and Cervus elaphus was confirmed as its scientific name.

The Roosevelt elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti (SIR-vuss can-a-DEN-sis roh-suh-VELT-eye), is the largest sub-species surviving today, with mature bulls often exceeding 1,000 pounds. Their preferred habitat is the wet, thickly forested and brushy slopes of the west side of the Cascades at the fringe of the coastal plain, from northern California to British Columbia.

Today, relatively stable populations of Roosevelt elk exist in the coastal states. California has a small population in the extreme northwest corner of the state, estimated at about 4,500 animals. In Oregon, the estimated population is approximately 65,000 elk. Washington claims another 35,000, and smaller populations exist in pockets along the coast of British Columbia.

Sources

Mike Lapinski, The Elk Mystique (Stoneydale Press Publishing Company, 1998).

John Madson, The Elk (Winchester-Western Press, 1966).

Peter Mathiessen, Wildlife in America (Viking Press, 1987).

Dan Pletscher, Director of Wildlife Biology, School of Forestry, University of Montana, personal communication, 7 March 1999.