Seventeen sixth grade boys and girls are on an elk hunt and today my classroom is a field above the YMCA's amphitheater cookout. Fall has been sounded in the Rocky Mountains by the bugling of male elk --bulging bulls swelled with testosterone so that they have disbanded from their typical bachelor herds and are all alert to fight their normal brothers for their gathered cows. One antlered royal (six-pointed bull) has herded his harem of calves and cows out of the YMCA baseball field and into the canopy of pine for some grazing and chewing of cud. After a heads up on their location from my radio, my class tracked them here to fulfill Colorado Outdoor Education Curriculum -- Elk Ecology 101. Eco derives from the greek oikos, meaning home. For the time time being, these elk like to stay at the Y-M-C-A, and as the Village People have sang "It' is fun to stay"here for the boys and girls as well. How do they experience sharing a home with the elk?
During autumn rut, bulls naturally command attention. Alert and tense, the dominant bull is prepared to fight every raghorn or satellite buckaroo that oggles his harem. The class watches the bull rear his head to display his massive antler, each weighing up to 40 lbs. -- a sign that he is from a royal line with tough genetics and has a successfully history of finding food. This heavy lifter charges a female elk that has strayed too far from the harem, the thick muscles of his belly rippling into spasms as he surges forward with his piercing, disgruntled bugle. Not too far girl. Lazily, she ambles back towards the herd, her long legs move with a meditated, unconcerned slowness. Even though the bull threatens her with the aspen-polished tips of his wrack -- he has nipped cow hide before-- the cool assurance of her walk reminds him that it was she who chose him. This big bull is lucky she continues to choose him, fights other cows for him -- so that her calf will be born in the early spring. If she can claim him early, her May or June calf will benefit from a long and ripe summer season, and have time to multiply the thirty five pounds of its birth weight by five before snows slide down old glacier paths on the alpine peaks and cover all in harsh Colorado winter. Late-born calves loose the winter fight when their mother was defeated the previous autumn in rearing, leg kicking tustles to mate with the dominant bull.
Imagine the of seventeen sixth graders as the gaze wide-eyed or through the lens of cameras as the 700 lb. bull gracefully bends his antlered head towards the ground between his legs and szzchhhhhhHHHH -- face soaked and dripping from a power spray of urine. Shrieks and giggles and gags, yells of "Gross!!!" or "What is he doing?" erupt from the previously spellbound group. Chuckling, I tell my class, "Bull Elk are thrifty. They make their own perfume to impress the ladies." Another priceless experience in outdoor education that I alone could never teach...
