Escaped elk elude aircraft, state agents

BOISE – Up to 160 domesticated elk that escaped from an Idaho hunting reserve remained elusive as a helicopter, an airplane and more than 25 state agents failed to locate any during the first day of an emergency hunt meant to keep the animals from mingling with wild herds.

“There are only two kinds of cover in that area where the elk are: grain fields and very thick timber,” Idaho Department of Fish and Game director Steve Huffaker said Sunday, a day after the search. “We had a trained observer in the helicopter, and he said, ‘We could have had 1,000 elk underneath us, and we still wouldn’t have seen them.’ “

Huffaker hadn’t been apprised by the Fish and Game Department and the Department of Agriculture of Sunday’s progress in the hunt in eastern Idaho near Rexburg.

Some of the elk were rounded up by the owner Friday, Huffaker said.

“I just want them out of the wild,” Huffaker said. “So, if he traps them or we kill them, those are equally good options. We just want to make sure they’re healthy and to make sure they’re really elk and not hybrids.”

The elk escaped before Aug. 14 from the Chief Joseph hunters reserve owned by Rex Rammell, a veterinarian who charges guests up to $5,995 to shoot one of the large bulls he has bred to have enormous antlers.

Rammell didn’t report their escape, as is required by law, said state officials including Gov. Jim Risch, who fear the animals might spread disease and hurt the genetic purity of wild elk herds, including those in Yellowstone National Park, just 10 miles away.

Risch authorized the animals’ “immediate destruction” Thursday.

He originally had asked the Fish and Game Commission to open a so-called “depredation hunt,” allowing licensed hunters and private landowners to shoot the animals. Commissioners opted instead to monitor the situation over the weekend.

Huffaker said he is not ready to make a decision on public depredation hunts.

“The Fish and Game biologists and conservation officers and (the hunters) from the Department of Agriculture are very good elk hunters,” he said. “If they haven’t been able to find them, I doubt the general public is going to do a whole lot better.”

Rammell’s wife, Lynda, told the Associated Press that employees at Chief Joseph and others had rounded up about a dozen loose elk Friday evening. They are being held in a pen on private property.

She said the family didn’t report the missing elk because no one knew they had escaped.

The couple, according to Chief Joseph’s Web site, charges $1 million for a membership in the hunting preserve, including a site for a home. The couple disputes that the animals carry diseases and maintains their genetic quality is superior to wild elk.

Rex Rammell has tangled with the state Department of Agriculture in the past over its efforts to get him to tag his domesticated elk. His wife said he is being unfairly branded as a rogue game farmer by state officials who don’t like his operation.

“They’ve painted my husband as being a very bad person, and he’s not. He’s a very good person,” she said.

“As far as the gene pool, my elk are far superior to the wild elk,” she said. That’s why every hunter in eastern Idaho wanted to shoot one when they thought the governor had allowed them to.”

In 2002, Rammell convinced the Idaho Legislature to forgive some $750,000 in fines levied against him for tag violations. In regard to the latest escape, Rammell has said his animals are tagged but may not have tags on their ears that are visible from the required 150 feet.

The Idaho Elk Breeders Association, a lobbying group for the elk-farming industry, said Rammell is not a member of the organization.

The group “strongly” supports Risch’s move to kill Rammell’s elk that haven’t been captured, it said in a statement.

Still, its leaders say fears about the spread of diseases including tuberculosis, brucellosis and chronic wasting disease to wild elk, as well as concerns about genetic purity, are overblown.

“The animals in question or their ancestry were tested for genetic purity by a qualified laboratory and declared pure elk,” said Gary Queen, the Elk Breeders Association’s president. “There has never been a reported case of brucellosis, tuberculosis or chronic wasting disease in the entire state.”