Elk

They are different species and easy to tell apart once you know the shape. The moose is the largest deer of all, dark brown, long-legged, with a heavy overhanging muzzle, a dangling flap of skin under the throat called a bell, and broad, flattened, palm-shaped antlers. It is usually solitary and lives in boggy northern forest. The elk is smaller though still large, tan-bodied with a dark neck and a pale rump patch, and its antlers are a sweep of round tines rather than flat plates. Elk live in herds in more open country and mountains. Confusingly, in Europe the word elk refers to the moose, so a European talking about an elk means the animal a North American calls a moose.

The bugle is the signature sound of the autumn rut. A bull gives this loud, high, rising call, ending in a series of grunts, to advertise his presence and condition to cows and to warn off other bulls. A deep, powerful, frequent bugle signals a large, dominant animal, and rivals often assess each other by voice before they ever come close enough to fight. Bugling peaks at dawn and dusk in September and October, when a valley with many elk can echo with competing calls. If two well-matched bulls do not back down, they lock antlers and push, and these shoving matches can occasionally end in serious injury or death.

In the western United States and Canada elk are widespread in national parks and forests, with famous concentrations in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain National Park, Banff and Jasper, and on the Olympic Peninsula, where the Roosevelt elk lives. In the East, reintroduced herds can be seen in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, in Elk County, Pennsylvania, in the Great Smoky Mountains, and in parts of Arkansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Autumn, during the rut, is the classic time to watch and listen, though it is also when bulls are most dangerous and should be given plenty of space.

They are large wild animals and should be treated with respect, especially at two times of year. In autumn, rutting bulls are full of hormones, unpredictable, and armed with sharp antlers, and they will charge people who get between them and their cows or who approach for photographs. In late spring and early summer, cows with newborn calves will kick and strike at anything they see as a threat. Most of the injuries elk cause each year in parks come from visitors approaching too closely. Outside those seasons elk are generally wary and will move away, and attacks are rare if people keep a safe distance of at least several bus lengths.