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September 25, 2006
How To Be A Bully
Corrado posed a question about the goings-on of the elk community here in my home. I do not claim to be an expert in this field as my experience comes from only 2 falls of observing elk interactions in Yellowstone National Park.
For about 10 months of the year, most elk live in harmony with each other. Perhaps here and there, cow elk will scuffle with other elk to protect their calves. Most commonly, though, all elk, including large bull elk, will coexist with no problems. For most of the year, cows and their calves live in fairly large herds, grazing through the backcountry. These herds often include young bulls, those that are only a few years old. Contrastingly, the large, older bulls live either mostly alone or with each other, totally seperated from all other elk. It is fairly amazing to imagine that the same bull elk you see chilling with each other for most of the year can get so downright nasty in the fall.
Nasty in the sense of the interesting elk conundrum that is the rut. In the fall, the both the cows and the bulls become fertile. Cow elk produce eggs and bull elk produce sperm only during a certain times of the year. Luckily (or perhaps as a consequence of thousands of years of evolution), these periods of fertility coincide in the fall. When this happens, the bull elk approach the large herds of cows and their calves, and everyone becomes gathered together in a highly disharmonious powwow of sorts.
The first thing that the bull elk begin to do when the rut begins is to bugle. I've previously described the crazy noise that is bugling. Bugling, as well as other dominant displays such as posturing, marking territory with their urine, and destroying trees and shrubs with their antlers, among the bull elk allow them to discern a pecking order of dominant males. Additionally, the bulls are showing off for the cows. Cows are seemingly attracted to the biggest bugling and the loudest displays.
Next, the most dominant bull elk that have gathered around a herd of cows and their calves (In the case of my neighborhood, it's 4 dominant bulls associated with this herd.) begin to form their harems. Some cows willingly follow certain bulls while others must be persuaded. The calves always follow their mothers and the young bulls try very hard to remain invisible during this time. Harem-gathering can be quite tricky, and the harems change from moment to moment. It's rather a compex and crazy chess game that isn't over until all the animals stop being fertile.
A cow might change her mind as to which bull she selects for mating; other cows might follow her lead. The benefitting bull elk might assist the cows in their physical movement from one harem to another, leading them in the appropriate direction and wooing them with funny bugles as they move. Opposingly, the losing bull might get pushy and frustrated, and he might begin running circles around the leaving cows so as to try to redirect them.
Bull elk also play sneaky games in trying to break up other bulls' harems and steal their cows. Frequently, bulls might attempt to steal a few cows from a large harem by physically isolating them from the rest of the harem. That is, the bull will walk right into the edge of the harem and push a few cows away just when the bull who owns the harem isn't looking. Generally, this is accomplished without much drama; I kind of think that the original bull doesn't even miss a few cows when they're gone. Rarely, a bull pulls off a full harem steal by igniting some sort of mass confusion among another bull's harem. Mass confusion can be created by acting crazy, knocking down trees, and running around wildly. This scares the cows and they will scatter and seperate from their bull. When a full harem steal occurs, you can bet this pisses the hell out of the harem's owner. Sometimes the original bull will fight the stealer; other times, he will digress into a rampaging fit of uncontrolled violence. Such was the case in my neighborhood the other night.
The case of the bull elk who rampaged his way through my neighborhood provides a great example of how this jockeying works. My "neighboorhood" is often described as having upper and lower sections that are about 200 vertical feet apart from each other. There is a large herd of cows and their calves and 4 dominant bulls that have gathered in my neighborhood. So far this year, one bull had gathered a harem and brought it to the lower section of my neighborhood while the rest of the herd and the 3 other bulls remained in the upper section of the neighborhood. On Thursday, one bull from the upper section lost his harem (I'm not sure how.), so he came down to the lower section to see what was going on. He incited mass confusion among the harem in the lower section of my neighborhood. I witnessed it: 1) He ran wildly around and through the group. His behavior frightened the harem and they scattered in several directions. 2) Then he did some posturing and bugling and charging of the bull elk who originally owned the harem to divert the bull during the cow scatter. 3) He then ran back and forth between the bull and the cows, gradually increasing the distance between the original bull and his now-lost harem.
In turn, the original bull went crazy. He plyed his way through my neighbor's car with his antlers. He ripped through saplings like they were flimsy blades of grass. He rammed my house repeatedly with his antlers, thereby ripping my satellite radio antenna off the house. The funniest thing was that my antenna then got caught in his antlers and he ran around trying to free it. It was a funny sight despite the fact that he ruined the antenna.
This is perhaps the most long-winded natural history description ever. Should this not be more than enough information about elk to put you to sleep, this website is an excellent review of elk, including the elk rut.
(MY RUNNING: I went on a most beautiful trail run on Sunday, 10 miles as the map read of gradual climbing then descending on a trail that circumnavigated a mountain. The views were fabulous and I felt great. It was crisp but sunny with just a few clouds. I ran in a sports bra and shorts! We encountered little grizzly bear tracks, pretty fresh, but no bear.
Today I did a challenging hill workout that I learned from an ultrarunner, and I highly recommend it. After a solid warmup, you begin running uphill on a trail at a non-sustainable effort, something you can keep up for 10 minutes tops. You run uphill at that effort until you feel you are about to redline, then you take the effort down a notch so that you are still working hard but that the redline push briefly recedes. You continue at that slightly slower effort until you in fact redline. Then, you slow into an uphill shuffle for a 5 minute recovery. Repeat ad nauseum until you get the designated workout you wish. The runner told me that each "set" should last 15-20 minutes, plus 5 minutes recovery. He also said that the workout is highly variable based upon terrain. Sometimes, the terrain will push you toward the red zone quickly even of you're adjusting your effort for the terrain. Other times, the terrain will allow you to consciously push the effort towards the red zone. He also said that he's done this workout for several hours on trails! I did a warmup, one set which lasted 25 minutes, then a hard effort back downhill to my car. I had intended to do two sets, but my time was cut short. I drove once to the trailhead and found that I had packed 2 left shoes, so I had to drive back home for the appropriate footwear before I could do the workout. However, I LOVED this workout. LOVED it. Guess what he calls this workout? The Kama Sutra Hill Climb. I will leave it at that.)
Posted by Meghan at September 25, 2006 9:07 PM
Comments
If I were a critic, I would write this:
Rarely (possibly the first time as far as can be recalled) have i witnesed such pleasurable literary harmony, so that the conclusion of one script could have been the foreword of the one preceeding it. In that the scope of their behaviour is mating, you neighborhood elks were indeed doing the Kama Sutra hill climb. In much the same way i would not be surprised if any athlete started bugling halfway through your ultrarunning friend's suggested "redlining" workout (which understandably leaves you LOVING it.)
So a BIG thank-you for this very interesting, entertaining and in-depth account of observational science, possibly the most reliable discipline in an all-virtualizing era. A far more rewarding and in depth document than many established scientific entities have been offering to date."
Go Meghan, GO!
PS. I am also very enthusiastic about terrain workouts in general, in as much as it is also the terrain (the earth if you will, and not just your head) that suggests what you might want to be doing. Something to offset the all dictatorial, arbitrary, predictable rule of the clock...
Posted by: corrado giambalvo at September 26, 2006 8:45 AM
It's weird that you should write about rutting today (is that the correct term?) because it was mentioned on Regis & Kelly this morning. Regis was showing a picture from a newspaper article about elks and rutting.
I can't imagine how you see things like grizzly bear tracks and keep right on running. This morning while Brad and I were running on a short trail through the woods, Brad saw a fox and scared it away for me because he said it was by far the largest fox he had ever seen. If I get nervous around a fox, what would I do if I saw a grizzly???
Posted by: Caitlin at September 26, 2006 1:14 PM