Consumer article and interview - title:
Can 3 Pillars Support 14,000 Acres?
Winter Elk-Feeding in Utah

"That Moose tore up a $16,000 trailer and took off up the hill, carrying the tailgate with him. It finally fell off when he reached the summit. It took six guys to carry him into the trailer after he was tranquillized, before he got here and woke up. Completely Bullwinkled the trailer with his antlers." Superintendent Dan Christensen of Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area enjoys talking to visitors about the Ranch's mission even when things don't go as planned. His hands-on style has him picking horses to pull wagons for the Ranch's winter elk-watching rides, as well as influencing decisions shaping the Ranch's uncertain future.

Hardware Ranch's elk-feeding season starts in mid-December, when over 400 elk come down from the high country to Blacksmith Fork Canyon. In this narrow canyon 115 miles northeast of Salt Lake City, elk survive on hay grown at the Ranch during the warm months. Elk feeding continues through mid-March when the snow starts melting enough to allow the elk to return to the mountains to forage for wild grass.

"There are three pillars of Hardware Ranch: elk feeding, great horses and good food," Christensen explains as we warm our hands over the small heater in the wagon drivers' shack. "On regular days we do four hundred elk-watching rides. There'll be a thousand on New Year's Eve because kids are out of school, and we'll do two thousand rides on President's Day for the same reason." Christensen estimates the Ranch has 5,000 kids participating in its outreach programs and 40,000-50,000 annual visitors, including hunters and sport fishermen, most of them in winter. He wants to make the Ranch a year-round destination and make up more of the inevitable financial shortfall at the same time with his Wagons Wild rides. These rides will go to beaver dams a few miles up Curtis Creek, starting in spring 2005.

Drivers for the Ranch's elk-watching rides come from a variety of backgrounds. Ryan Hull earned a degree in Spanish from Utah State University, and plans a career in law enforcement in his native Washington state. Matt Wallace had been driving wagons for just a couple months, but could tell tourists a lot about elk feeding and migration habits he'd learned from two years doing different Ranch jobs.

Days begin long before the first tourist comes for an elk-watching ride. The big horses need currying and feeding before they're harnessed to the wagons they'll pull for rides, and hay bales for the elk need stacking on the hay wagon. A horse may need a rest day if it made a lot of rides the previous day. Some horses need to be teamed together because they don't work well with some of the others. Christensen and his drivers make careful choices for the day's rides.

Elk feeding is an important task that happens every winter day. "We prefer to pull the hay wagon with horses," Ryan told me, "but when we're late like today we use the tractor." Matt drove towards the herd, and it looked like the pied piper had come as elk began to follow in ones and twos. Finally the entire herd came to browse as Ryan pitched alfalfa off the slowly moving wagon. He'd forked most of it to the hungry animals by the time the tractor pulled to a stop at the elk ride loading area. Tourists had already queued up for the first ride despite a snowstorm that made driving in from Salt Lake City and Logan a challenging adventure.

A December ride shows you a few bulls half-heartedly jousting amid cows and youngsters eating quietly, the rutting season long over. When the rut begins in late August, elk bulls corral 60 cows or more and copulate with as many fertile cows as possible. While that's going on another bull may horn in, and try to convince some cows to leave. Bulls go crazy defending their harem from these interlopers between couplings with cows, and sometimes fight. They work themselves out of as much as 10 percent of their summer weight, so they're worn out when the rutting season ends in October.

When the snow is too much for wagon wheels, drivers replace them with runners to give tourists a sleigh ride to the elk. And there are midnight sleigh rides on cold full-moon nights. Tourists can satisfy their appetites at the Hardware Ranch Café during the afternoon.

Matt talked about the ranch's history as he drove a wagonload of tourists to the elk. The state of Utah recognized the damage elk were doing to private landowners' property near Logan in the Cache Valley, the elk herd's traditional winter feeding grounds. The state bought the original Hardware Ranch from the Box Elder Hardware Company in 1945, with Federal money. The Ranch grew through later land acquisitions to its present 14,000 acres, and has served as an elk research center since the 1950s. The elk herd has increased over the years to over 400 animals returning to feed at the Ranch every winter.

The Ranch hasn't been self-supporting for a long time. Dan Christensen intends to change that. As it stands now, the Ranch gives ticket collections from elk-watching rides to the state and gets only the money the state appropriates for it. It makes up the inevitable shortfall through private donations. "We'd like to go non-profit but we'd need some exemptions from the state to do it," Christensen says. "What we take in now isn't quite enough to run the Ranch so we depend on donations and private funding for the rest. Education is important but it's a [monetary] black hole. We're looking at cutting back on elk feeding to save money, and emphasizing the other two hundred fifty wildlife species here like moose. We'll also start raising horses again. One of my dreams is to see horses running free across the meadow in the summer." As it is now, some of Hardware Ranch's horses come from the same barn as the Budweiser Clydesdales, and all come from outside the Ranch.

Elk don't normally eat alfalfa, though they adapt to it readily. Sagebrush reintroduction would return one of their favorite foods to Blacksmith Fork Canyon, and cut the expense of growing hay to feed them in winter. Reintroducing sagebrush is expensive and it takes several years to establish, so it won't be a quick cost reduction.

Christensen also worries about the spread of chronic wasting disease already killing mule deer, white-tailed deer and elk in neighboring states. The disease raises the importance of weaning elk off winter hay, since it seems to spread by contact in large herds. Cutting back the Ranch's winter feeding program would disperse the herd and reduce the risk.

Feeding cutbacks mean elk going elsewhere for food. That makes winter elk viewing less convenient but still possible, especially after sagebrush establishes itself and draws elk to defined areas. The Ranch's continued existence depends on the value the public sees in activities it pays for. The Wagons Wild rides and the attraction of fine horses would expand those activities and allow Christensen to share more of his 14,000-acre office with kids and their parents. The elk are perhaps the luckiest of all: they only have to worry about survival of the fittest, or tending a harem if you're a bull.