The recent birth of an elk calf is the first in West Virginia since elk were reintroduced in December 2016, according to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.
The agency confirmed the birth Thursday, saying it has captured footage of the calf passing by a camera set up to monitor a pregnant cow separated from the herd.
Out of the 24 elk brought to West Virginia in 2016, six were pregnant, though two died soon after arriving. Officials believe at least one other cow is currently pregnant.
“For our elk population to be sustainable, there has to be reproduction, and this calf is the first of many to be born here in West Virginia,†Division of Natural Resources Director Stephen McDaniel said in a statement. …
Legislation in 2015 authorized the elk restoration plan. The Tomblin Wildlife Management Area in Logan and McDowell counties set aside 9,000 acres for elk restoration.
It was roughly three years after Ernest Hemingway had committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho. Thompson was visiting the late author’s home, trying to find what had made the area so attractive to Papa in his final days. Over the entrance to the cabin was a 6×6 set of elk antlers (it’s unclear if they were from a Hemingway hunt, but they are presumed to be). When the admiring journalist left Ketchum and headed to his home in Aspen, Colorado, so did the antlers.
That was in 1964. Some 52 years later, the antlers are back in Ketchum, returned not by Thompson himself, but by his widow.
Anita Thompson recently gave an interview to BroBible.com in which she said, “He got caught up in the moment. He had so much respect for Hemingway. He was actually very embarrassed by it.â€
Hunter, 27 at the time, wanted to understand what brought Hemingway back to Idaho after years as an expatriate in one country or another. He visited Papa’s Ketchum home while on assignment for The National Observer, then headed back to write an article about his conclusions. The antlers came off the cabin’s front doorpost and along for the ride.
Thompson never boasted about the theft; never invited friends over to see his prize. As much as the gonzo journalist loved to insert himself into stories and “tell it exactly as I saw it,†he was less than forthcoming about the antlers. They stayed in semi-seclusion for the remainder of his life, hung unceremoniously in his garage.
A young Hunter S. Thompson went to Idaho to write about Ernest Hemingway and decided to take a piece of his hero home with him — a set of trophy elk antlers.
More than half a century later, the gonzo journalist’s wife returned the antlers to Hemingway’s house in the mountain town of Ketchum.
“He was embarrassed that he took them,” Anita Thompson said Thursday, noting the deep respect her husband had for Hemingway’s work. “He wished he hadn’t taken them. He was young, it was 1964, and he got caught up in the moment.
“He talked about it several times, about taking a road trip and returning them,” she said.
She gave back the antlers Aug. 5 to Ketchum Community Library, which helps catalog and preserve items in the residence where the author took his own life. It’s now owned by the Nature Conservancy.
In 1964, Hunter Thompson, then 27, came to Ketchum when he was still a conventional journalist. He had not yet developed his signature style, dubbed gonzo journalism, that involved inserting himself, often outrageously, into his reporting and that propelled him into a larger-than-life figure.
Thompson was writing a story for the National Observer about why the globe-trotting Hemingway shot and killed himself at his home three years earlier at age 61. Thompson attributed the suicide in part to rapid changes in the world that led to upheavals in places Hemingway loved most — Africa and Cuba. …
In the story, later collected in his book “The Great Shark Hunt,” he noted the problem of tourists taking chunks of earth from around Hemingway’s grave as souvenirs.
Early in the piece, he wrote about the large elk antlers over Hemingway’s front door but never mentioned taking them.
For decades, the antlers hung in a garage at Thompson’s home near Aspen, Colorado.
“One of the stories that has often been told over the years is the story of Hunter S. Thompson taking the antlers,” said the library’s Jenny Emery Davidson, who helped accept the trophy. “These are two great literary figures who came together over the item of the antlers.”
Davidson said historian Douglas Brinkley, who spoke at the library in May and was familiar with the antler story after interviewing the writer, contacted Anita Thompson. She called the library on Aug. 1.
Davidson said the antlers have since been shipped to a Hemingway grandson in New York who wanted them. It’s not clear if the antlers came from an elk killed by the author, who was a noted big game hunter, or if they were a gift.
Sean Hemingway didn’t respond to emails or phone messages seeking comment.
Like Ernest Hemingway, Thompson ended his own life by shooting himself, dying in 2005 at age 67 at his Colorado home.
His widow wants to turn the house where he lived and worked into a museum, planning to open it next year by invitation only. Like Hemingway’s home, it’s much the same as it was when Thompson was alive.
“I couldn’t open it with a clear conscience knowing there’s a stolen pair of antlers,” Anita Thompson said, noting the theft was unusual behavior, even by her husband’s standards.
Watching the video, it seems clear that the photographer could have stood up and, at least briefly thereby, frightened off the elk, and he would very probably then have had time to scurry off and take shelter in one of the nearby cars. It also seemed clear to me that the young elk was frequently very close to starting a really thorough hoof-stomping, antler-poking display of power.
The Knoxville television station reported yesterday that Park authorities sent that elk off to live on a farm, having apparently witnessed more than one incident of “human contact.”
Apparently, park visitors had been feeding him, and antler rubbing and close encounters of the cervine kind may have been his way of saying: “Feed me, Seymour!”
I saw a very unusual sight in Cataloochee Sunday morning. There were about twenty people lined up along the road watching and photographing a bull elk and his harem of about ten cows and three calves. Everyone was being very quiet and truly enjoying the sights and sounds of a beautiful Fall day in the Smokies.
Movement caught my attention to my right and there sitting on the pavement about seventy-five yards up the road from me was a spike elk sparring with a photographer. The spike had apparently come out of the woods behind the man and wanted to do a little sparring. I turned my camera and began recording the session.
The man lowered his head to avoid eye contact and covered his face with his arms while the spike placed the crown of his head between his antlers against the man’s head and began turning back and forth. The man protected himself as best he could with his arms while clutching his camera and this went on for several minutes.
Each time the spike stopped and backed up a few steps the man would look up and the spike would begin again. The man did not appear to be suffering injuries but the spike would not stop. Finally, a white car approached and turned toward the spike who backed up just long enough for the man to rise to his feet. When the man got up the spike moved toward him and lowered his head like he would charge. The driver of the car approached the spike closer and the man was able to get in the car.
Montana Outdoor Radio asked: “Have you ever seen anything like this in areas out west where the elk are used to people?”
Yes. Some years ago, Karen and I saw California idiots trying to pet a female Roosevelt elk from the Elk Meadows herd near Orick, California. As the human family advanced, the elk looked more and more alarmed, and it was easy to see that if that elk ever decided she was cornered, she was going to stomp or kick some of the offending humans good and proper. Fortunately for them, the elk found herself an exit from the crowd closing in on her, and trotted away. But there was certainly a real possibility for someone to have seriously hurt.
The big news in Clearfield was the Elk that took a plunge off the bridge.
This ~ 1,000 lb. bull elk jumped off of the Clearfield Bypass bridge near the mall this afternoon. Numerous crews including the Game Commission were called in to retrieve the bull from the water. It is unknown what caused him to jump. He died on impact.
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Pennsylvania’s elk descend from a herd of elk presented as a gift from President Theodore Roosevelt to PA Governor Gifford Pinchot.
While no one is exactly sure how it happened, officials near Eagle say there is a cow elk wandering around with a bar stool stuck on its head.
The elk was first seen on a conservation easement property south of the Eagle Ice Rink.
Resident Bill Johnson told the newspaper that he saw the elk with the metal bar stool stuck on her head from his house. The legs were pointed up and the elk’s head was pushed through the metal rig that holds the legs together, he said.
Johnson said the stool didn’t seem to prevent the elk from grazing or moving around.
“Apparently she is fully mobile,†Colorado Division of Wildlife officer Craig Wescoatt told the Daily. Wescoatt said he has been receiving reports about the animal for several days.
Efforts to get near the animal have not been successful. When approached, the elk scampers away.
“She’s very active. The bar stool doesn’t seem to be impairing her to any great degree,†he observed. “She just looks kind of goofy.â€
