Hunting & Fishing Question About Elk Observations this Year

[Dog&Jeep]

Greetings.
I live in Salinas CA, and we have Tule Elk that hang out in our surrounding area. They're a protected species, so I can't hunt them. But I do enjoy tracking their movements and monitoring their behavior.

This year something odd is going on. They are already showing rut behavior. The bulls are fighting, rounding up their harems, chasing the cows around...etc.

This all seems months too early, and I'm curious what it might portent to. Has anyone seen this before?

Thanks

 

[GTOJOSH]

Same happening with people.
Everyone on edge and lost their minds wanting to fight over the littlest things.
It just shows, even the animals can sense the Tom Foolery from Washington.

In all seriousness though, in my area the coyotes have gone to ground, feral cats are on edge and I've already seen the deer coming into the lower fields which usually doesn't happen 'till Oct/ Nov.
Was pointing this out to my son yesterday.

 

[Ezana4CE]

Interesting, I didn’t know California had any wild elk.

 

[Dog&Jeep]

Interesting, I didn’t know California had any wild elk.

Yeah, we do. There are Roosevelt Elk in Northern California, which are the same species as all the rest of the continent. And in Central California we have Tule Elk. Tule Elk are smaller, only about 2/3 the size of regular Elk, but appear the same in all other respects.

Tule Elk almost went extinct at one point. Hence their protected status. In recent years they've made a significant come back. In our local herd I've counted over 200 on the same hillside. It's kinda ironic that most Salinas residents have no clue they even exist.

 

[Dog&Jeep]

Here's a picture of Tule Elk that I took about 3 weeks ago.

 

[Ezana4CE]

@Dog&Jeep I looked them up and read about them on the site from one of our national parks out there. Very interesting information.

 

[Modoc]

There are also significant herds of Tule Elk on the Carisa Plains Wildlife area and the Grey Lodge Refuge.

I was corrected on another forum about Roosevelt Elk and Rocky Mountain Elk distribution in California. North West CA has the Rosevelt and North East CA has Rocky Mountain with I-5 being an approximate dividing line.

FWIW, the Cache Creek herd is in the rut also (according to a friend there).

With luck, I’ll have a report on the NE area in the near future, but my calendar is not very optimistic.

 

[WeiserBucks]

Tule elk are not protected statewide. There's hunts for them but draw odds are terrible thanks to the ponzi scheme of the points system and the auction tags are to expensive for the poors.

 

[WeiserBucks]

Here's one from last week, auction tag.