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My brothers and I have kept our grandfather’s North Dakota farm intact all these years. It is half cropland and loses money every year. T^he other half is at the headwaters of Spring Creek, just over the divide from the Little Missouri. It has several draws, (what are called “coulees” locally) a bunch of springs and seeps, beaver dams and a lot of good cover. Adjacent are about 36 sections of roadless private land, almost all of it similarly rugged grazing land.
About 50 years ago a driver was hauling a semi-load of elk from Yellowstone to some other destination. He stopped at a bar on the Ft, Berthold Reservation called the “Snake Pit”. While he was enjoying a few beers, a couple of the drunks went out in the parking lot, opened the trailer and turned the elk loose. That’s how elk became reestablished in western North Dakota.
My brothers and I went back last week for a funeral and stayed at the farm. I walked the whole place to see what had changed (a lot) and check the fences. In one of the coulees I found elk bones and a skull with at least five, probably six points on its rack. The coyotes had taken care of the carcass and the bones were pretty well scattered, but I gathered up what was left. At first I thought winterkill, but this was obviously a big, strong herd bull. I wondered if I would find an arrow, but what I found was a scapula with a bullet hole. I’m thinking someone took a shot – maybe quartering and from above – and put the bullet through the animal’s shoulder.
That is a pretty lousy place to shoot an elk, too high to hit the heart or the big blood vessels, and too much bone and muscle. It’s a shot that wounds rather than kills and even if the animal goes down it ruins a lot of meat. That was a really fine elk and it must have run quite a ways and not left much of a blood trail. I can’t see a hunter giving up on a trophy bull like that must have been.
ND_elk (1).jpgND_elk (2).jpgND_elk (3).jpgND_elk (5).jpg
jn
About 50 years ago a driver was hauling a semi-load of elk from Yellowstone to some other destination. He stopped at a bar on the Ft, Berthold Reservation called the “Snake Pit”. While he was enjoying a few beers, a couple of the drunks went out in the parking lot, opened the trailer and turned the elk loose. That’s how elk became reestablished in western North Dakota.
My brothers and I went back last week for a funeral and stayed at the farm. I walked the whole place to see what had changed (a lot) and check the fences. In one of the coulees I found elk bones and a skull with at least five, probably six points on its rack. The coyotes had taken care of the carcass and the bones were pretty well scattered, but I gathered up what was left. At first I thought winterkill, but this was obviously a big, strong herd bull. I wondered if I would find an arrow, but what I found was a scapula with a bullet hole. I’m thinking someone took a shot – maybe quartering and from above – and put the bullet through the animal’s shoulder.
That is a pretty lousy place to shoot an elk, too high to hit the heart or the big blood vessels, and too much bone and muscle. It’s a shot that wounds rather than kills and even if the animal goes down it ruins a lot of meat. That was a really fine elk and it must have run quite a ways and not left much of a blood trail. I can’t see a hunter giving up on a trophy bull like that must have been.
ND_elk (1).jpgND_elk (2).jpgND_elk (3).jpgND_elk (5).jpg
jn
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