When nature calls ...

(Author's note: We interrupt the regular programming of The Nature of Things for a little piece on a trip to Benezette in Elk County earlier this month. I hope to return to finish "Moment in time: Part two" soon. However, I am an avowed practicing procrastinator.)

We received the most "piss-poor" reception on an early October trip to view the elk in Benezette. However, despite the wet welcome from both the animals and the weather, the trip was not a complete wash.

While Venango County didn't receive a whole lot of rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ian, counties to the east were still dealing with the precipitation. 

Not only was it wet, it was also decidedly chilly.

This weather kept not only the human activity subdued but the elk action as well.

​However, there were elk out and about, especially at the Elk County Visitor Center. It was just one bull and his harem of cows.

​Past trips during warmer and sunnier weather, elk bugling could be heard across the hills late into the evening. 

This year seemed much quieter with maybe only a couple of calls heard.

However, it was cold and rainy.

I didn't feel that inspired and I don't think the elk did either. We spotted one bull lying in a field at Woodring Farm.

​We took a quarter mile walk around the trail and he was still resting when we returned. 

Nonetheless, the fall foliage display in Elk County which was slightly ahead of our county, was still bright and delightful despite the weather. 

It seemed so odd to me to view elk in nearly almost the same type of woodland area as parts Venango County. An article by Joe Kosack for the Pennsylvania Game Commission stated that Eastern elk once ranged statewide. 

"Elk were exterminated in southeastern Pennsylvania and rare west of the Allegheny River and in the Blue Ridge and Cumberland mountains by the opening of the nineteenth century,"  Kosack wrote. "By the 1850s, what remained of Pennsylvania's once mighty elk population was limited to sections of northcentral Pennsylvania, predominantly in Cameron, Elk and McKean counties."

Kosack then went on to describe the reintroduction of elk into the state and the beginnings of the herd that folks can view today. Earlier reports on Facebook had reported that a couple of bull elk had been spotted as far north as Coudersport in Potter County. 

While the state's elk herd was alive and well, whitetails seemed to be abundant in the Benezette area as well. 
​
Nonetheless, I had pictured in my mind, photos of big, majestic bull elk sparing and bugling.

Instead I had to settle for a little bull making some water on the roadway and found abundant humor in the moment. 

​That's just the nature of things round here and there.