Last Frontier Active Club

⛰ Fauna of Columbia 🇺🇸 Elk (Cervus canadensis) It's bugle being almost a defining characteristic of the mountains and valleys of the western United States through September and October, the elk is a majestic member of the deer family, once ubiquitous across almost all of North America. Four subspecies of elk currently inhabit North America: the Tule elk, Roosevelt elk, Rocky Mountain elk, and the Manitoban elk. However, the Eastern elk went extinct in the late 19th century due to over-hunting. Efforts to reintroduce elk to the eastern United States began in the late 1990's, and populations of Manitoban elk and Rocky Mountain elk were used to establish a now stable and growing population in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. "Near by the call of the bulls in the rutting season—their 'whistling,' as the frontiersmen term it—sounds harsh and grating; but heard in the depths of their own mountain fastnesses, ringing through the frosty night, and echoing across the ravines and under the silent archways of the pines, it has a grand, musical beauty of its own that makes it, to me, one of the most attractive sounds in nature." 📜 Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail 📍Girdwood, Alaska