When most people commute to and from work, they have to deal with traffic, the inevitable fender-bender, and probably a line at their favorite coffee joint. In the Black Hills, you don’t have much of that. Instead, we’ve got elk.
No, not the kind that elect exalted rulers every year (though we have a few of them, too). I’m talking about the kind that grow antlers and bugle.
In this case, fuzzy antlers. I snapped this picture a few days ago on my drive home from the office. There they were, a herd of about five elk, chilling out in a field just a few minutes outside Deadwood near the top of Boulder Canyon. They were more interested in finding grub than in the cars whizzing past them on the four-lane highway, which is a little strange for the normally-cautious animal. I figured I’d play nature photographer and try to snap a sneaky shot of them.
Of course, as soon as I pulled the car onto the shoulder, they took off like… well, like a herd of elk. Not before I could get a couple of quick pictures, though. Neat animals. Much larger than you might expect. The Black Hills have a pretty sizable population of elk, especially in Custer State Park. If you don’t get the chance to see them, you may get to hear them if you camp out for a night or two during their rut in the late summer and fall.
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Very cool pic. A few years ago, my friend and I were driving through the Hills south of Hill City. I mentioned that I had never seen elk in the wild in the Black Hills. On cue, we rounded the bend and saw a herd of about 10 elk standing in a pasture.
“Well,” I said to my friend, “now I’ve seen them.”