As the morning sun was drying the fields near Mancos, a bull elk stared down at the headquarters of the Schultz Elk and Cattle Ranch at the edge of the Montezuma County line.
Most mornings, he comes down for a breakfast of minerals and oats, but he could smell strangers, and he was keeping his distance.
“They are a little standoffish,” said Dennis Schraeder, co-owner of the ranch.
The bull is a member of a small, revitalized herd that was sharing about 200 acres, just one of several grazing areas, with six bulls and two cows. In another field, a larger contingent of young, pregnant cows enjoyed the sun.
They all live much as they would in the wild, which is one of the goals of Schraeder and his family members, who own the ranch jointly.
“I just want to see them raised in their natural environment,” Schraeder said.
The family bought the ranch with an interest in raising cattle, as they had previously, but it came with a license to raise elk, and after some research, they decided raise elk calves for sale, said Robert Schultz, Schraeder’s son-in-law.
They raise cattle in another part of the ranch.
The family is part of a growing trend. Producers nationwide are getting back into the elk business, now that demand is picking up again and there is a shortage of elk products, said Travis Lowe, executive director of the North American Elk Breeders Association.
The market for elk products, mainly meat and antlers, bottomed out in 2007 and 2008. But a pound of elk antler velvet, once $10 a pound at the low point, now sells for $40, Lowe said.
The velvet is valued for its medicinal properties.
The demand for hard antlers also is up, and the association receives requests for thousands of pounds of antler that can’t be filled, said Brenda Hartkopf, also with the Elk Breeders Association. The hard antlers are sold as dog treats.
Membership in the elk breeders group also is rebounding. Once more than 1,000 members, it’s now about 300 – up 60 percent since August 2013, Lowe said.
The industry was hit hard by drought and the price of feed, like many other livestock industries, Lowe said.
Ranchers also have to comply with strict regulations that can be burdensome in some states. But he said Colorado’s rules are more reasonable, and they are meant to prevent diseases from spreading from captive animals into wild herds.
The state requires rigorous testing for chronic wasting disease and yearly testing for tuberculosis. Any elk that is slaughtered for meat is required to be tested for chronic wasting disease, a brain disorder, Lowe said. If an elk tests positive, the other members of its herd must be killed as well.
Ranchers can earn accreditation if their herd remains disease-free.
At the Schultz ranch, the elk are surrounded by state-required 8-foot-high fences, and they have tattoos in their ears, marking them as animals raised in captivity, Schultz said.
Compared with cattle, the elk are not nearly as needy, said Jessica Schultz, Robert’s wife. They also swim regularly in the irrigation ponds, which keeps them cleaner than the resident black Angus cattle, she said
But during breeding season, the bulls smell fairly rank, Jessica Schultz said. They dig holes, urinate in them and then wallow in it.
When they are put out to pasture, near U.S. Highway 160, they are also roadside stars, with tour buses stopping to gawk at the passive herd, Robert Schultz said.
As the operation matures – it’s only in its second year – the family may set up space for tourists to stop and observe. The ranchers understand the allure of the herd.
“Not a lot of people get to see a large bull in their entire lifetime,” he said.
