Pint-Sized Elk?

Hunting

The bugling of bull elk piercing the autumn air isn’t limited to the Western states. But in Maryland, the target for hunters is considerably harder to hit.

Sikas - pint-size elk that have claimed a widening chunk of Maryland’s Eastern Shore - are challenging hunters willing to stalk the wetlands.

A whopper sika stag might reach a shade more than 100 pounds, less than half the weight of a fat whitetail buck - and a seventh of the weight of the sika’s larger cousin, the Rocky Mountain elk.

The herds date to the 1920s, when a Boy Scout troop exhibited about a dozen animals at a summer show in Ocean City, Md. When proceeds dropped, the scouts, in turn, dropped the animals on the island of Assateague.

Some national wildlife refuges are allowing hunters to take up to 10 a year because of fears that sikas will overgraze fragile marsh plants.

But the wary critters hang out in thick vegetation that makes them difficult to hunt.