Elk Sightings

Three Glick siblings: Jan, John, Eric

One last round of photos from Canmore, Alberta. We had numerous encounters with elk during our stay there, fortunately not of the extremely close kind. The first day four of us went for a walk, exploring one of the nearby paths, and saw a small herd of elk grazing in the meadow. They kept a wary eye on us, and continued munching.

Three rocky siblings, the Three Sisters, with elk in the lower left corner.

Another day my eye was caught by the early morning sunlight on the mountains, and Jan joined me on a quick outing to the meadow. When we came out between the houses and past the first line of pines, we saw a large bull across the way, and heard him bugle, and then responses from another one or two elks down the valley. It is a strange eerie sound -- almost like some odd electronic device, when heard at a distance. (Here's a youtube clip that can give you an idea, though much closer than we were: elk bugling )

Our last morning, several of us went out for a hike, planning to to head across the meadows and into the forest. We heard more bugle calls and realized that there was a herd of elk right at the edge of the trees ahead of us. There were at least three males and a larger group of females, and there appeared to be a bit of territorial charging going on. We didn't see any actual clashes, but decided it was probably wiser to head in another direction for our hike. (If you zoom in on that little light spot right where the path intersects the woods, you may be able to see one of the bulls.)  Off to the right of the photo below, there was another patch of meadow, with a bull keeping watch on this herd. You can see him and two cows in the last photo.