Hills awash in bugling, changing colors
Matt McClain © News
A bull elk grazes at Rocky Mountain National Park on Tuesday morning. The park is experiencing the beginning of fall with the changing of the aspen trees and the fall rut, or mating season, for elk. There are more than 3,000 elk in the park. Admiring humans can look for them in meadows and where meadow meets forest.
Slowly but surely, autumn is creeping down the mountains.The aspens have begun to turn golden above 10,000 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park.
The leaves below 10,000 feet should start turning in the next week or so, according to Shirley Baudek, a 15-year resident of Estes Park and wife of town Mayor John Baudek.
Folks living below Estes Park will have to wait before they notice the aspens changing around their homes, she said.
“Well, you can see them from our house. You can see them changing up high,” Baudek said. “The other day, there was the sun shining on the peaks, and it was just golden and beautiful.”
Also coming down in droves from the higher elevations in Rocky Mountain National Park are the elk. Many already have made it to town, residents said.
Baudek said as the air gets cooler, as it has been in recent weeks, and the elk mating season starts to warm up, herds move downhill and bull elks jostle for cows and unleash their bugling cries.
Baudek said town residents often question why tourists and visitors head into Rocky Mountain National Park to look for wildlife when they can stay in town and see the elk.
“Oh, my gosh, they’re around my house,” Baudek said.
“At 2 in the morning the other day, they were bugling. It just starts now in September and goes through October pretty much, and the calves are born in late May or early June.
“We have a calf born in our yard every year, and we had one born under our deck last year.”
One of the reasons that I came to Colorado was the incredible hunting and fishing opportunities. This year is pretty well shot due to having had surgery on my arm. It is doubtful that I will ever pull a bow again. Yet I relish the memories of being in the high country and coming within a few feet of timber bucks, huge bull elk, and on two occasions a full curl ram.
Colorado, there simply is no other place like it on earth.
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