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Show Majestic Elk Among Game Animals In Garfield County Among the large game animals which inhabit Garfield County is the handsome elk. Elk herds are located lo-cated in areas A and B on the south slopes of Beaver Mountain the northwest corner of the county in the Ml. Dutton area north of Utah Highway 12, and in the Panguitch Lake area in the Boulder Mountain area. The herd on Mt. Dutton numbers num-bers over 700 animals and elk can often be seen from the dirt road that leads north to Tom Best Spring starting at the top of Red Canyon on Utah Highway 2. There are between 500 and 600 animals on Boulder Mountain and fewer at Panguitch Lake, and in the Tropic Reservoir area. Utah allows elk to be hunted with unrestricted permits on most units. This year's elk season starts on the first Wednesday of October. Success in Garfield County on elk hunts has run at about 80 percent in recent years on restricted permit units and 10 percent on the open permit hunts. Originally called "wapiti," by the Shawnee Indians, colonists nevertheless chose to call the mag nificent animal "elk." In Europe, elk are actually closer to equivalent of the moose, but the name has clung and they arc commonly called elk today. A close relative of the red deer of Europe and Asia, the American elk was once found over most of the United States and Southern Canada. Hunter and disease, however, how-ever, killed so many of them that they survived only in the region west of the Rocky Mountains, where the largest herds lived in (Continued On Page 11 A) Majestic elk trumpets loudly, with hunting season just around the corner. MAJECTIC ELK (Continued From Page 4A) Yellowstone River, and in Washington's Wash-ington's Olympic Mountains. The bull elk stands about five feci high at the shoulder and may weigh from 700 to 1,000 pounds with rounded antlers that can spread as rr.acri as five feet. The cow elk -ft somewhat smaller than the bull and has no antlers. Elk feed primarily on grasses but also eat twigs and needles of trees. Wolves and cougars are their natural enemy. Elk calves are born in the spring and it is rare for a cow to bear more than one. An elk calf is tawny-brown tawny-brown with many white spots that are lost at the first change of coat in August. |