The rut continues for about a month in length, and that month is typically September, with the middle of the month the height of the rut. Bull elk bugles in autumn near Yellowstone’s Mammoth Hot Springs (Photo: NPS/Neal Herbert) Elk Rut Season Peaks in SeptemberĮach fall, starting as early as August 15 some years, elk enter their breeding season, or rut. In many cases, the challenger is run off by the herd bull, while a less mature bull than even the challenger, perhaps a bull as young as two, slips in and breeds a cow. In return, the herd bull gives voice to his answer, which is often deeper and clearer than the challenger, a voice of maturity and dominance. A challenger steps into the meadow and bellows a challenge. This is commonly the result of a dominant bull that may have a harem of cows that he is carefully guarding. In many cases, the bugle is interpreted as a challenge from one bull elk to another. It’s an odd combination that, like the buzz of your first rattlesnake, you’ll never forget. It’s a sound that is difficult for the human alphabet to imitate, a guttural bellow, a shrill pitch, and a hollow grunting. In most cases, the bugle starts low and throaty, rising to a high whistle, then dropping to a grunt or a series of grunts. The sound of a bull elk bugling is something that draws many visitors to Yellowstone each autumn, for it is an experience as memorable as anything you are likely to have in the park. If you’ve never heard the bugle of the bull elk during the fall rutting period, you are in for an experience that is at once thrilling and haunting. The reason for this is almost entirely auditory. But nothing etches the lens through which we see fall as much as the rut of the elk, Cervus alaphus. There are sights and smells to a Yellowstone autumn, elements that, if you’ve visited here many times, become as familiar as old friends. Yellowstone’s autumn is defined in many ways-frost on morning grass, color creeping into shimmering aspen leaves, ice rimming mountain ponds.
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