Estes Park
Golf is a seemingly risky sport under any circumstances. Singer Bing Crosby died of a heart attack in 1977 moments after walking off the 18th green of a course in Spain. Then there’s lightning. And, of course, throwing yourself into the lake after missing a 4-foot putt.
But out this way, where courses are nestled high in the mountains and overlap the territories of large, wild animals, golf can get downright ridiculous.
Take this tourist hamlet alongside Rocky Mountain National Park. Golfers at the Estes Park Golf Course must routinely tiptoe around herds of elk. For a few weeks each year, these untamed creatures become so sexually aroused they rub their heads against trees and make loud bugling sounds.
(The elk, we mean. After 18 holes, golfers are generally too tired for that kind of behavior. Unless they’ve driven a cart.)
Even when calm, elk have a significant impact on a golf course. Nothing says “Welcome to Estes Park” quite like stroking a putt and watching the ball dip into an elk hoof print, veer wildly off line and come to rest on the other side of the green amid a pile of the great animal’s droppings.
And then there’s, well, the No. 1 problem.
“See those brown spots on the green?” asks Estes Park Golf Course worker Skip Peck, gazing out the window of the pro shop the other day. “It’s dead grass. Killed by elk urine. We’ll have thousands of those brown spots, all of them caused by elk urine.”
A sign on the first tee tells golfers that if their ball rolls into a pile of elk droppings, they are allowed to move either the elk droppings or the ball.
“What we do is take an iron and scrape the elk droppings away just enough so we can make a swing and hit the ball,” said veteran Estes Park golfer Allen Arms. “And on the greens you’re allowed to fix the hoof marks before you putt. Sometimes there are so many hoof marks, you’d think the elk had a party.”
The party is about to end.
In a few weeks the National Park Service will release a report ending a 37-year hands-off policy and detailing a new strategy to deal with the ever-growing elk herd in and around Rocky Mountain National Park.
The Elk and Vegetation Management Plan – two years in the works – has, according to park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson, concluded that elk will be controlled by “lethal reduction by agency staff.” (See clarification below.)
The park has between 2,200 and 3,000 elk.
According to the report, park officials could shoot as many as 1,000 of the elk, reducing the herd to between 1,200 to 2,100 animals. The timetable for the plan has not been announced.
“The current size of the elk population in the park is not natural,” Patterson said. “We have no predator base and so the elk don’t have to look over their shoulder anymore. They stay in one place and mow down the land before they move on.”
Elk are native to the area but were wiped out by hunting by the 1870s.
A small herd from the Yellowstone area was reintroduced in 1914, a year before Rocky Mountain National Park was established.
Rangers maintained the herd at between 350 and 800 elk by regularly shooting the animals. In 1969, though, a new park policy banned any culling of the animals. They began a steady climb toward today’s population of as many as 3,000.
“We want a healthy herd of elk, but there are clearly too many,” said Estes Park Mayor John Baudek, who was involved in the study. “There has to be a reduction. It may mean even more elk in town for a while. You can’t hunt them here, and once the culling started in the park I imagine many would move to the safety of the town. But eventually, we’d see fewer elk.”
For Town Administrator Randy Repola, a golfer who said he has seen elk chew on golf balls at the town course, the lethal reduction ruling that is about to come down is bittersweet.
“The elk have gotten used to being around people,” he said. “Being in town is not a big deal for these elk. And it’s just not a good idea for elk to get that used to people. We took such good care of them for the last 35 years that now the herd has grown well beyond its capacity.”
Then he paused.
“Maybe,” he said, “we have loved them to death.”
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
This Rocky Mountain Ranger story about plans to control the Rocky Mountain National Park elk population should have said that, except for a “no-action alternative,” lethal reduction by park staff is part of every option being considered in a Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The Draft EIS must still undergo public review, and a final decision will be made by the agency’s regional director.
