Meals on Wheels Keep Elk Away From Crops

NACHES, Wash. — Every day at 1:30 p.m., John McGowan and a crew of volunteers deliver meals on wheels to thousands of hungry elk.

The elk, mesmerized by the two large Army surplus trucks loaded down with hay, gather on the snow-dusted hills at the Oak Creek Wildlife Area, 20 miles west of Yakima. As soon as the first bales of alfalfa are heaved to the ground, the dinner stampede begins.

Six-point bulls get first dibs. Yearlings use a stiff-legged whap-whap-whap to push smaller calves farther down the feeding line. Eventually, though, everybody finds a place to chow down.

The state-run program is designed to keep a historically uneasy peace between farmers and these majestic animals, which number between 13,000 and 15,000.

“If we didn’t feed them, they would continue to migrate lower and there would be a conflict with farmers,” says McGowan, manager of the wildlife area.

Nearly 100 miles of 8-foot-high fencing also has been put up to try to prevent marauding elk from dining on crops.

It hasn’t been foolproof. In January, a Tieton cherry grower shot 22 elk feeding in his orchard over a period of about three weeks. Jerrie Vander Houwen estimated they did $30,000 in damage to his trees.

There have been as many as 70 elk at a time in the hilltop orchard above Oak Creek, a problem he says he’s been dealing with for eight to 10 years.

Three years ago, Vander Houwen tried feeding the elk himself. He says the state told him to stop.

Starting last fall and into the winter, “I was out there two or three times a night, chasing them out of the field. It got to where they wouldn’t even chase,” Vander Houwen says.

He says he warned state game officials and notified them he was about to start killing the elk. The state disputes that contention.

Vander Houwen, 63, says he didn’t want to shoot the animals. But “I didn’t feel like I was going to get any help, and I didn’t want to lose all my trees.”

It is not illegal to shoot wildlife that are damaging crops. A landowner must first get state approval and then notify the Department of Fish and Wildlife after the animals have been killed.

Vander Houwen now faces charges of killing the elk without authorization and allowing the meat to be wasted by failing to notify the department immediately afterward.

Such “elk wars” have a long history in central Washington, and Vander Houwen’s case isn’t the only recent example of conflict between wildlife and area farmers and ranchers.

Farther south, on the Hanford nuclear reservation, state game managers are planning to round up about half of the ever-expanding herd of 1,000, now living on a no-hunting reserve, and move the elk to the mountains. At least one rancher has suggested hiring a sharpshooter to trim the herd.

The elk on Hanford’s Arid Ecology Lands Reserve are believed to have migrated there from the Yakima herd.

The herd got its modern-day start in 1913 when a group of sportsmen imported 50 Rocky Mountain elk--at $5 a head--from Yellowstone National Park.

They traveled west by rail, then were loaded onto wagons for the final leg of the journey. One wagon toppled over, killing three elk and releasing some on the spot.

“They readily took to the hills. It’s a success story,” McGowan says.

From their arrival until 1950, it was the fastest-growing elk herd in the country.

That’s about when the first elk wars, as they were called, began.

“The shooting wars broke out in the late 1940s and early ‘50s,” McGowan says. “They invaded orchards, and hundreds were shot by individuals protecting their crops.”

The situation was at its worst in 1955, when one of the hardest winters on record drove huge numbers of foraging elk into agricultural areas. That’s about when the state’s feeding program began.

There is sufficient land on the east slopes of the Cascade Range to support the Yakima herd, but not enough winter range to keep them out of cropland without feeding programs such as the one at Oak Creek, McGowan says.

The state buys land and manages it to deal with that problem. Oak Creek was established in 1939.

“If we didn’t own the land, we would have to drastically reduce the elk herd,” McGowan says.

There are also quality-of-life issues involved. For most people, wildlife is part of the Pacific Northwest experience, McGowan says.

During the January and February feeding season, Oak Creek daily attracts dozens of delighted spectators, from senior citizens to preschoolers.