Sunday, January 12, 2020

The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge: The Tule Elk




Dale Matson


Click On Photographs To Enlarge




         It was a very foggy morning here in Fresno but we had planned a trip to the San Luis Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos CA to see the Tule Elk. The three refuges are located in the San Joaquin Valley and total about 44,000 acres.
         The Tule Elk is the smallest of the four subspecies of elk in North America. The herd was started in 1974 with elk from the Detroit and San Diego Zoos placed in an enclosure of about 800 acres. Since that time this “seed” herd has been used to relocate elk around the state and there are now about 4,000 elk. We have seen Tule Elk near Big Pine from highway 395.
         There is a five-mile trail (one way) around the high fence enclosure and the photographs were taken along that drive. The Tule fog only allowed us to see the elks that were near the fence. The fence mesh is large and my 200-600mm Sony lens could easily be placed through the mesh. My camera was the Sony A9. We really enjoyed the experience seeing about 25 of the 50 resident elks.





































Tule Elk In A Tule fog

Here is a YouTube Video I made of photographs and video clips.

No comments:

Post a Comment