Oko Wikcemna Yamni ake Nunpa

Monday, Sep 28 to Sunday, Oct 4, 2020: high 80, low 30, gust 46 mph, moisture 0.00"

While on a conference call Monday afternoon in the house, i spotted a few elks down by the Turtle Pond. As soon as the call was over i told Dan about the elks, so he and i did the belly crawl from the south end of the hangar to the knoll where the camping trailer used to be parked; about a hundred yards or so. We were winded by the time we got there, so he stayed put and i shifted to a knees-and-hands crawl all the way down to the springs—in direct sight of the elks. 

Soon enough they spotted me, but the sight must have been so strange that they didn't spook. But before long they all got up and climbed the hillside a little ways where they grouped up and basically stood around and watched. Except for the bull. He remained outside the group, and when a cow wandered, he herded her back. Lots of them had their heads high, noses lifted, trying to smell me. But it was windy, blowing almost directly south up the springs, so they couldnt catch a whiff. At one point along my descent, the bull turned in short bouncy steps until he was directly pointed at me, then took some high prancing steps down the slope toward me. I immediately did some fast calculations about whether or not i could reach the distant fence beyond my right shoulder before him. It would be touch and go. And even if did beat him, there would only be a 4” wood post and four strands of barbed wire between us. That wouldn't be pretty. But then he stopped and turned, so i continued. See, i was out there in no man’s land, but in just a short distance of crawling, instead of running way from him, it might be feasible to run toward a steep bank between us from which i could try to jump into a tree growing near it. All things considered, i liked the possible outcomes there better than at the fence.

He never came closer. And as long as i stayed close to the ground (didn't stand up), the elks were cautious but didn't run away. Finally, i slowly stood up and started back up the slope toward the house. It wasn't long and they took off at a trot to the west, over the ridge and i haven't seen them since. 

The picture above is of the bull earlier in the morning. Some of the cows can be seen under the trees on the left of the pic. 

Below are pictures along the crawl to the springs. In the first one, you can see the white rumps of the elks on the other side of the springs. From the middle photo i’m still quite a ways from being at the tipping point between running to the fence off to my right, and running toward the tree in the center of the pic that i figured i could try to jump into if the bull charged me. The bottom photo is from just the other side of that tree, showing the sixteen cows all bunched up and the bull off to the right.