Great Smoky Mountains National Park Elk Poaching Suspect Confesses and Arrest will be made

This Friday bull elk #21 was shot and killed in the Cataloochee section of the Great Smoky Mountains national park near Maggie Valley NC by what turned out to be a man from Granville County.

Bull elk #21 was 13 years old and one of the first elk moved in the Cataloochee Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains national park in an experimental North American Elk reintroduction program that was to last 4 years but ended up concluding 8 years later.

Bull Elk #21 was born in Elk Island, Canada and spent some time in Land between the Lakes Kentucky before he was released along with 24 other elk in the Cataloochee Valley in 2001.

Bull #21 was a fixture in the valley and always stayed closed by the original field he was released from in contrast to some of the elk which have ended up as far away as Newport Tennessee or Asheville North Carolina.

Often Bull elk #21 would graze in a pasture right by the rangers station with 3 other bull elk buddies we nicknamed the bachelors. This gave our visitors an up close view of a full mature bull elk before they even entered the main fields within the Cataloochee Valley.

During the rut the bachelors would go their separate ways but as of last week since the rut is winding down he was hanging out with his buddies again.

Bull 21 was one of the most dominate bulls in the Cataloochee Valley and his impressive size and huge antlers delighted visitors for years and impressed many of the female elk (called cows) which he collected into a harem and bred.

Even though bull elk #21 was already a grandfather, he was still active during the rut and put on a good show during this years breeding season before he was gunned down.

The picture below was taken October 5th of this year and it shows Bull Elk 21 with his harem in the field by the Beech Gap School in the Cataloochee valley of the Great Smoky Mountains national park.

The shooting took place at close range while he was most likely feeding or just watching the coward who shot him.

Bull elk #21 was found lying down in the field by a park ranger who works in the valley. He collected evidence and worked with the park to transport bull elk #21s body to the UT College of Veterinary Medicine for a necropsy which has yet to come back.

A joint investigation to find the poacher who shot the elk in the Great Smoky Mountains national park was started utilizing Park Rangers, a National Park Service (NPS) Special Agent, and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

The suspected poachers truck description lead the Elk poaching investigation to Granville County. Here the special NPS agent received a confession and additional evidence was gathered.

The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Great Smoky Mountains national park are working together to develop the case so that an arrest can be made at which time the suspects name will be released.

The poacher will face a fine of up to $5,000 and 6 months in jail for the actual poaching and will face losing his truck as well as the weapon he used to commit this crime. It is possible he may face other charges as well for example possession of a loaded weapon inside the National Park which is still illegal until February of 2010.

Park Visitors, National Park employees and Volunteers are all outraged at this heinous crime. Fortunately there are still enough bulls in and around the valley capable of breeding so that the Elk reintroduction program in the Great Smoky Mountains national park will not fail as a result of the loss of bull 21.

Acting Chief Ranger, Steve Kloster stated "The suspect was quickly identified and a strong case developed because of the willingness of members of the community to come forward and talk to Rangers and state wildlife officers."

He went on the say "The many visitors and volunteers who come to Cataloochee expressly to watch the elk constitute a very effective surveillance network which has undoubtedly prevented elk poaching from occurring earlier."

I am proud to be an Elk Bugle Corp Volunteer and when the call is made next spring for more volunteers I hope that we can get even more people who are dedicated and who love nature and the park to come join us and help protect the remainder of the herd.

I would like to thank all of those involved in the investigation for the fine job they had done and thank Park Ranger Mark LaShell, our Parks Elk Specialist: Biologist Joe Yarkovich and the other Bugle Corp members for the outstanding work they do in the valley every day for our Elk Program.

Related Elk in the GSMNP Stories

• Alleged Poacher of Bull Elk 21 in Great Smoky Mountains National Park charged, but is it enough?
• Memorial Fund For Slain Bull Elk #21 to Support the Elk Bugle Corps Volunteer Program
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park Elk Poaching Suspect Confesses and Arrest will be made
• Elk poaching takes place in Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains national park.
• Elk Reintroduction in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park needs more Volunteers for Elk Bugle Corp Program

When the Elks rut in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The 2008 Elk Rut season is already starting in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the best place to see the the elk in the national park is still the Cataloochie Valley near Maggie Valley North Carlina.

While elks make their distinctive calls called bugling throughout the year, now is when it picks up in intensity as well as the male bull elk forming harems of as many females cows as possible.

The bugling sound the elk make can be heard from quite a distance echoing in the Cataloochee Valley and fields. The bugling sound is very distinctive as its call raises in pitch and volume until the almost grunt turns into screech followed by a short series of grunts.

Watching elk grunt and bugling as dawn is breaking and they come out of the fog as it lifts from the Cataloochee Valley. You can see the moisture vapor coming out of the elks mouth as they bugle breaking the morning silence. Moments or minutes later far in the distance you start to hear the other elks bugle as they each call out their territory.

Elk during rut experience ranging hormones and have already shed their velvet from their antlers which from into huge racks. Their mating habit included urinating on the ground and scratching up the ground with their antlers and then rolling in the urine soaked ground to absorb the scent. Standing far from them you can smell their unbelievable pungent odor.

Male bull elk at this time are working on forming a harem of cows herding and gathering them to hopefully mate. Unfortunately for the bull elk at this time the cows are not ready or willing to mate adding to the elk's frustrations and further increasing its aggressiveness as it spars with other male elks for wives and territory.

Watching the elk battle and the individual elk gain and lose members from their harem is fascinating and is like watching members of a professional sport team play and since all of the large elk are tagged with numbers so it's easy to keep score. I can assure you if you watch them for 3 days straight you will be amazed at the conquests and loses - reversals and fumbles - all in the beauty of the Cataloochee valley.

Elk at this time of the year are particularly aggressive and can present far more of a threat to the human visitors of the Great Smoky Mountains national park which should keep their distance - especially when the elk are sparring with each other. Park volunteers called the Bugle Corps patrol up and down the road educating park visitors and trying to have visitors stay the recommended distance away from the elk.

The elk are best viewed early in the day and starting an hour or so before sunset. They can be often seen right from the roadside. It gets packed on weekends with visitors and locals alike so during the week is the best time to come to Cataloochee.

I implore anyone who comes to observe the spectacle to pull to the side of the road and shut off your engines! Not only will you save gas, you will allow other to hear or record the wonderful sound of the elks bugle instead of your car idling.

Since the elk population has doubled since the elk introduction back into the Great Smoky Mountains national park their amazing behavior will soon be able to be observed in other areas of the GSMNP that elk gather, namely in the small fields along Newfound Gap Road just north of the Oconaluftee visitors center and south of Smokemont.

While some see this population and range expansion as a good thing, I see this as a management nightmare brewing. As I have stated before numerous times it would have been best of the elk population was confined to the Cataloochee and Balsam Mountain areas and if the park service let the local black bear help thin the herd rather than capturing and moving black bear in the spring when the elk give birth.

Enjoy the elk in the Great Smoky Mountains national park - but please - from a safe distance!

Elk in the Great Smoky Mountains national park: wild, beautiful but dangerous.

Elk have been extinct in the Tennessee and North Carolina Smoky Mountains for more than 100 years, but thanks to private funding Elk have been reintroduced in the Great Smoky Mountain national park in 2001.

These majestic animals were reintroduced into the Cataloochee section of the Great Smoky Mountain national park in North Carolina near Maggie Valley, but since Elk don't understand park boundaries they have wandered out of the safety of Cataloochee's valleys and fields and have spread into other areas of North Carolina and Tennessee.

Elk can commonly be seen along the roadside near the construction area on Big Cove Road in Cherokee North Carolina and north of the Blue Ridge Parkway along the side of the road on 441 Newfound Gap Road by the Oconaluftee visitor center in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I have been told that the elk have now been spotted as far away as the Greenbrier section of the Great Smoky Mountains national park a short walking distance from the city limits of Gatlinburg Tennessee.

Elk are very large unpredictable wild animals that can easily seriously injure or kill someone without warning. Elk have no concept of park borders nor do they understand that foolish people walking up close to them with young children are offering no real threat to these wild animals, they just want to take a picture of them.

This picture above shows 2 adults walking within 50 feet of an elk lying down in the grass off Newfound Gap Road yesterday. This is the time of year when young elk calves have been just been born and are commonly hidden in grass away from predators. If there is an elk calf in the grass near this bull elk, anyone approaching the young calve could have been killed.

Since this Elk is a male and the calves are generally in the Cataloochee valleys and hills chances are there are no calves in the grass near Newfound Gap Road but these visitors had no idea of the elks habit.

The wife of the man on the left was excusing her husbands illegal and extremely foolish behavior claiming there are no posted warnings. When she was advised by me of the danger her children and her husband are in and the fact that her husband can be fined, she never asked her husband or children to back away from the Elk. She also told me what he was doing was ok because the park rangers who just arrived did not tell her husband what he was doing was wrong.

There were in fact no park rangers there but a male and female park volunteer than just got off work at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. They just stood there at the roadside and watched as people walked down off the roadside and went into the field to approach the wild animal.

When showing this and other photographs which clearly showed how close these park visitors were to the Elk to the volunteer he seemed disinterested.

As the traffic situation for the elk jam was getting worse I asked the park volunteer to radio or call in order to get an enforcement officer to the scene to protect the park visitors from their foolish behavior and work on keeping traffic flowing. He begrudgingly complied.

The Great Smoky Mountains national park Elk population has more than doubled since their reintroduction and unless better management practice are put in place and people behave responsibly - people with get injured if not die as a result of a man versus elk encounter.

It is time that the public and the park service wake up. The elk do belong in the park - this was their territory, and we as guests of the national park must behave in a personally responsible manor to protect ourselves for our own and the elks safety.

As for Elk outside of the park, this will become a more serious issue as time goes on and there will be elk versus traffic and elk versus human encounters increase along with the elk population expansion.

The area that the elk were to be introduced in needed to be set up as to safely contain the elk via physical barriers and the lack of such barriers will bite the National Park Service in the butt when the wrongful death and wrongful injury lawsuits start to occur.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Elk need your help!

The Great Smoky Mountains national parks largest resident is the Elk who were reintroduced in 2001 after being extinct in the wilds of the North Carolina and Tennessee Smoky Mountains due to over hunting for more than a century.

The National Parks Park Volunteers-in-Parks program is now seeking volunteers who are able to assist the staff by helping provide visitors to the park with information, help in traffic control of tourists coming to see the elk and making sure that visitors coming to the park are not antagonizing the elk by approaching them too closely, shining lights at them or using bugles to simulate their mating call all prohibited activities.

This new Great Smoky Mountains National Park Volunteer program is going by the name Elk Bugle Corps referring to the sound the elk mate during rutting when the male bull elk bugle and spar in dominance battles with one another.

The elk are primarily in project in the North Carolina Cataloochee Valley section although strays wander to as far as the Oconaluftee visitor center and further. The Volunteers are needed for the Cataloochee Valley from May 25th through November 19th which are peak elk viewing times and see the most visitors to this section of the National Park looking for Elk.

Late springtime mean calving for the elk where new mother at times leave their calves alone in fields which can be an invitation to disaster if curious person comes along and an irate mother elk returns to her young to see humans close by.

The rutting season is a fantastic time to watch and listen to the elk, but it is also a time when this huge potentially dangerous animal is more agitated.

The park needs volunteers who can help from 5:45 pm - 8:45 pm who can sign up for either a particular day of the week or a whole week at a time. The most help is needed on weekends.

If you are interested in helping the magnificent creatures call the Great Smoky Mountains National Park's Volunteer Coordinator at (865) 436-1265 by May 7 to receive an information packet and on May 17 and 19 there will be a Bugle Corps volunteer training session.