Droves of Wyoming residents will click over to Game and Fish’s website on June 19 to review their draw results for elk hunting tags. Thousands will be looking to see if they’ll have a shot at a cow or calf in the vast complex of mostly public land stretching across the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
The opportunities there are great, and have been for a long time. The long-studied Jackson Elk Herd, although experiencing a stretch of relative scarcity, has been one of the largest elk herds in the American West for generations — a population held in check by targeting the females.
On the south end of Jackson Hole, the Fall Creek Herd has similarly thrived. This year, Wyoming’s offering 750 limited-quota tags that will give hunters a chance to put a cow or calf in the freezer in the two hunt areas, split by the Snake River, where the herd dwells.
The abundance continues farther south and east in the Afton, Piney, Pinedale and Upper Green River herds. Many hundreds more Wyoming residents will hand over $43 to vie for a chance at bagging a cow or calf elk during late-season hunts, when animals are down at lower elevations and easier to kill.
It’s no secret that wapiti are thriving statewide. They’re doing so well, especially in places with lots of private land, it’s even problematic. Wildlife managers are going to great lengths to kill more female elk — the reproducers that drive the size of any ungulate herd.
But such abundance isn’t expected to last for six northwestern Wyoming herds. By around a decade from now, cow elk hunting might no longer be necessary, and, in fact, prohibited. Instead, a new force of nature would fill the herd-shrinking role that human hunters now play.
That factor is chronic wasting disease. It’s an incurable, transmissible neurological condition that shrinks the lifespan of its wapiti hosts from 15 or so years down to just a few. Spread by always-lethal prions that can live in the environment for decades, it’s not always devastating for elk. Herds, even overpopulated ones like those in the Laramie Mountains, have lived with CWD at lower prevalence rates for decades.
But there’s a differentiating factor for the six herds where experts expect that cow hunting could soon end. For months at a time during the winter, thousands of these animals are parked on feedgrounds, eating hay and alfalfa in small spaces where scientists have learned that feeding drives up contact rates between animals and accelerates the spread of diseases. Chronic wasting disease is just now reaching the region, and the response so far, guided by a management plan, is to maintain the status quo.
Many northwestern Wyoming elk hunters appear to be greeting the looming calamity with a shrug, said Hank Edwards, a retired wildlife health laboratory supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
“I have tried in so many of my presentations to get the message across that this is dire,” Edwards told WyoFile. “Yet, people just don’t get it. They say, ‘F*** it, I’ll get to hunt another 10 years, then I’ll be too old to hunt. Who cares?’”
Hunter receptions
With the worst effects of CWD on feedground elk still years away, concerns among rank-and-file hunters are out there. But it hasn’t yet been cause for alarm. When the Game and Fish Commission solicited comments in response to its proposed elk hunting seasons for 2025, the public submitted several hundred remarks. But only a few comment writers encouraged precautionary steps to avert the likely worst outcomes of a disease that experts expect will decimate six elk herds within a decade, or two at most.
“I recommend lowering the objective. We need to kill some elk,” former Game and Fish Commissioner Mark Anselmi wrote about hunting seasons in Jackson Hole. “CWD has raised its head and [at] some point in [the] future, I would guess the refuge will quit feeding. Knock the population down by harvest while you can.”
Green River resident Bill Ames made a similar request. He called for reducing densities of feedground-dependent, overpopulated elk along the Wyoming Range’s Piney Front.
“I would like to see herd objectives reviewed with possible CWD impacts and reducing feedground dependency,” wrote Ames, who also asked for a late-season hunt on the footprint of a 33-acre feedground in the Bondurant area where an epidemic is incubating. “What can we do to put elk of the Dell Creek feedground in people’s freezers and avoid the slaughter of a high prevalence of CWD?”
A Pinedale resident also sent in an unconventional idea to address feedground elk. Otherwise, there was little encouragement to tackle a disease threat that could upend Northwest Wyoming elk hunting as it is known today.
Pavillion outfitter B.J. Hill, who runs hunts in the Jackson Hole area, denies that there’s a problem.
“The CWD narrative is being driven by some of the Jackson managers and staff as well the [National Elk Refuge] employees,” Hill wrote in his comment letter. “It’s basically in-house activism unchecked.”
Outfitters like Hill have largely voiced support for keeping elk feeding going, regardless of CWD. He’s insisted in the past that expert projections are wrong. Other outfitters have said they’re open to closing feedgrounds, so long as state wildlife managers don’t lower their targeted herd sizes.
Lee Livingston, a past president of the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association, said he doesn’t see any easy answers to state and federal wildlife managers’ predicament. The feedground system is over a century old. It has separated elk herds from domestic cattle, propped up populations, insulated herds from the effects of bad winters and allowed them to cope with the loss of habitat from private land development.
“Unless you just did a wholesale slaughter of elk, I don’t see how you could shut down feedgrounds,” Livingston said at last week’s Wyoming Sportsperson Conservation Forum in Dubois. “If you’re going to shut down feedgrounds, then you need to come up with an alternative.”
There have been small-scale efforts to do just that, like paying ranchers to host elk.
Another alternative that’s being assessed is having fewer elk on the landscape in order to forgo feeding. Right-sizing herds to fit the natural winter range that’s available isn’t a popular idea — outfitters have signaled they’ll oppose it — but it’s the path that wildlife officials who understand disease dynamics predict will lead to the best outcomes for populations and elk hunting.
Path of most destruction
Wildlife disease experts have gamed out what they expect is about to take place in the Jackson Elk Herd and other five feedground-region herds. The scientific inquiries were published by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2023 and 2024 in anticipation of changes to elk feeding sites on federal land.
Elk populations and hunting opportunities decline under all scenarios analyzed, including the end of all cow hunting. The reason for the latter, USGS disease ecologist Paul Cross explained, is that the analysis assumed Wyoming would maintain its current elk herd size objectives, but that, by around year 10, the actual populations would tumble more than 20% below the goal. When that happens, wildlife managers’ standard response is to scale back or end cow hunting to allow the herds to grow.
While declines are expected regardless of management choices, the keep-feeding option shakes out the worst.
“Our predictions are a 55% reduction in population size across the five herd units, excluding Jackson,” Cross told WyoFile.
Within 20 years, CWD prevalence in those still-fed herds is expected to reach 42%, he said.
Those animals, for many hunters, will be headed for the trash instead of the freezer. There’s never been evidence of CWD crossing over to humans. But studies suggest there’s not an absolute barrier, and Game and Fish promotes Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization guidance to not consume CWD-positive animals.
Expected rates of CWD among feedground elk are four times greater than the highest rates detected in Wyoming elk today. The Iron Mountain Herd, with just 10% prevalence, currently tops the charts in elk, according to the state’s latest assessment.
Filmmaker Shane Moore, an avid elk hunter who grew up on a ranch in the Gros Ventre Range, understands the skepticism about the expert projections.
“They are really admittedly nothing more than guesses,” said Moore, who sat on the working group that shaped Wyoming’s CWD plan. “But they’re guesses from very bright people — the most knowledgeable people.”
The eight wildlife disease experts who contributed to the USGS study include: Emily Almberg, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks; Justin Binfet, Wyoming Game and Fish Department; Hank Edwards, Wyoming Game and Fish (now retired); Nathan Galloway, National Park Service; Glen Sargeant, U.S. Geological Survey; Brant Schumaker, University of Wyoming; Daniel Walsh, U.S. Geological Survey; and Ben Wise, Wyoming Game and Fish.
Moore is one of the few hunters who has vocally advocated for Wyoming to heed the scientific predictions.
“Right now, we have only bad choices,” Moore said. “When you’re faced with two bad choices, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the best of the bad choices. We haven’t, in my opinion.”
Political realities constrain Wyoming Game and Fish from making any sharp turns on elk feeding. The Wyoming Legislature passed a law in 2021 requiring feedground closures be vetted by the Wyoming Livestock Board and leaving the decisionmaking authority to the governor. And the agency’s feedground plan relies on developing tertiary herd-specific plans that require building consensus with pro-feeding parties.
Moore laments that an issue that could jeopardize elk hunting’s future has become so politicized.
“I think the sad reality is we’re not listening to the biologists in the community,” he said, “we’re listening to the politicians.”
‘Real life test case’
Meanwhile, CWD is spreading steadily into the feedground region. Dead elk that tested positive were found last winter at four of the 21 sites, and there’s no knowing how many additional live infected elk were shedding the prions that spread the disease.
“This is going to be a real life test case of model predictions and CWD dynamics in elk feedgrounds,” said Game and Fish’s Binfet — one of the experts who contributed to the USGS’ modeling.
There’s no knowing what’s about to happen, he said.
“CWD may not be the demise of elk in the GYE, as some folks fear,” Binfet said. “The other thing that would not surprise me is if feedgrounds contribute to a situation whereby we see CWD prevalence in elk skyrocket.”
Game and Fish retiree Edwards, the wildlife health laboratory supervisor who also contributed to the projections, is pessimistic. Over his decades on the job, he consistently saw how the feedgrounds spread disease. During one bad winter in the early 2000s, he said, brucellosis rates at the Alpine feedground spiked from 30% to 80% in one year.
You could easily make the case, Edwards said, that CWD is going to be spread more effectively than brucellosis, which doesn’t flare up until fetuses are aborted in the spring.
“As the snow melts, all those feces that have been buried and trampled become available,” he said. “The likelihood of transmission is going to increase.”
Edwards worries that elk hunters don’t grasp what’s about to hit them.
“It may take a big increase in prevalence at Dell Creek or whatever feedground before the public really starts to take notice,” Edwards said. “Unfortunately by then, it’s going to be too late.”
By too late, he means CWD will have already started the process of destroying the herds. The eye-opening changes it can inflict upon an ungulate population will likely be “permanent,” he said.
“From all that we know about prion diseases,” Edwards said, “the populations are not going to recover.”
Chronic wasting disease has been a slow-motion train wreck since the moment the disease made its way to into wild ungulate populations. The state of Wyoming has basically been hands-off and let the disease run unchecked. Avoiding the hard conversations that elk herds need to be free-ranging and migratory, the state has catered to the interests of private industry.
A big factor that is missing across the entire state of Wyoming is large carnivores. Wolves are specifically designed to hone in on elk that may have infirmities. CWD positive elk don’t show outward symptoms for many months after they are infected. Some up to nearly two years. All the while, they are spreading prions into the environment that can infect other cervids. Wolves are a necessary part of keeping elk herds healthy.
A living experiment is Yellowstone National Park where wolves and elk are allowed to play out their natural predator/prey dynamics. Yellowstone elk notoriously don’t have the same infirmities that elk have in other parts of the West. Ending wildlife feeding and reducing wolf quotas in the Trophy Game Management Area could provide for some relief for the almost certain disastrous effects of CWD.
Funny that the rise in CWD in elk and the political push to end feeding also help incentivize the shrinking of the National elk refuge…conveniently located adjacent to undoubtedly the highest value per acre NPS land in the entire nation…hmm…cough…cough…land transfer…
It’s also a little too convenient that decentivizing feed grounds and creating hysteria about the future of the elk population ultimately draws up tag desirability and price gouging justification on elk tags…outfitter fees…and private land access
What a bunch of coincidence…
Outstanding article Mike! You have everything right! Except…um…ya know…wolves?
Humans don’t have any realistic means to eradicate CWD, and there is precious little they can do to mitigate or slow the spread.
Wolves, with their testing behavior while hunting, are able to perceive sick and injured animals and cull them from the herds. They can recognize infected animals and remove them from the landscape long before a human can.
Having a biologically effective number of wolves on the landscape is the most sensible response to rising CWD infection rates.
As scientific knowledge currently stands there are no known practical and effective alternatives to having wolves do what wolves do: prey on sick and injured animals.
I have a several biologist in my family and they are concerned about CWD . There are some findings that mountain lions mitigate the spread of CWD (link below). I hope that is true because there is a risk CWD can spread to other animals like cattle..
https://animalwellnessaction.org/new-report-reveals-mountain-lions-mitigate-spread-of-brain-wasting-disease-plaguing-deer-and-elk-in-colorado
About 50 years ago, my biologist brother told me about the dangers of high densities of game animals, and how it leads to spreading disease. Kind of a no-brainer? How did the Wyoming biologist miss this or was that a political decision made at high Levels in government? Got wolves, or are they killed by snowmobiles?
The language of the latest science….”might”, “not always”, “could”, “expect”, “may”, “likely”. Shutting down feed grounds is the goal, surely we all see this, in the HOPE that it will curb or stop CWD. Hope is a poor strategy!
One expert says in this article because of CWD and continued feeding we “could” lose up to 55% of our elk in the region.
Another expert, the former Director of G&F said if we close the feed grounds we “will” have to reduce our elk numbers by 75-80% just to manage landowner damages.
So, regardless our elk numbers are going down, pick your poison folks. Mine is to let CWD run its course.
Most herds in the GYE have already lost more than 55% from wolf and grizzly predation, the N. herd in Gardiner lost close to that 80% number.
CWD has run it’s course in other areas of Wyoming and elk simply dont get infected as much as the deer do.
Well said Mike.
CWD has run its course (and is still skipping along nicely) through the deer population to the point you don’t see many deer anymore.
Wildlife experts have know what spreads this problem. But done nothing to prevent the spread. Continued to help spread the problem.
Let’s get real here. First and foremost, your comment on Sportsmen giving a “shrug” to the issue is offensive and BS. You may have found the one who would say that but most are seriously worried about CWD. Hunters are the original environmentalists and their long history of support of wildlife is undeniable.
Secondly, time for the Jackson community to acknowledge their role in the spread of CWD by herding/feeding them in the winter. Allow Mother Nature to do her thing and this challenge will be minimized at worst and possibly removed at best. Human intervention is not the answer.
Wow. What happening here is similar to the public’s reaction to Climate Change and the CO2 saturation in our atmosphere. “I’ll be dead before it’s really bad, so… no big deal.”
Well, when the elk herd is down to about 15% of its original size, a “Big Deal” it will be.
Great rundown on the information by the always thorough, Mike Koshmiri.
Too bad we are worried about elk hunting and not the elk. I don’t know how Wyoming Game and Fish staff persist when their science plays second and third fiddle to the outfitters and livestock board.
Too bad we can’t have objective, rather than political, outcomes.
It is a very unfortunate situation for all, Including elk! There are some facts we must keep in mind. While feedgrounds may spread the disease faster, the disease as stated has been around for decades. I probably ate deer or elk that had CWD in the late 60s, early 70s. Unfortunately we have fed for so long we cannot just stop!another point is while these 10 year predictions make sense on paper, we are dealing with a wild animal with changing weather year to year. Let’s just say I am not betting the ranch that CWD will wipe out herds. Nature has built in checks and balances.
Lastly, let’s look at whitetail herds all over the state that have been decimated by CWD, no feed grounds for them. They do congregate on some farm lands but what about them? Game and fish is trying to wipe them out in areas I am t old by a G&F employee.
The Golden era of NW Wyoming elk hunting slid a long time ago along with Montana’s part of the GYE.
From Area 51 to now Area 80 and every unit in the GYE. Cow tags are at 50, less, or none at all. CWD has had nothing to do with the collapse of these herds. 250 of those 84/85 tags are on private $$$ land, the other big chunk (400) is probably to limit elk out of 84 going into that same ranch area. Area 78 much the same, with 175+ keeping elk off Wilson ranches. If there are ranchers out there offering access for us common folk, please comment with your contact info.
Laramie peak Area 7 the ancestral home of elk CWD is handing out unlimited antlerless tags on private property and 1800 on public lands this year.
In the Pinedale region areas 97/98 area are essentially in a geographical peninsula of mediocre protection from wolf and griz expansion and our tags for antlerless still fill freezers for locals that know the areas :-).
In lean years in 97/98 we can no longer rely on a drive an hour and a half to the refuge to fill our tags. The national elk refuge is no longer a refuge as packs of wolves can be seen there every winter and “Area 77” now is drastically cutting back access for antlerless tags.
It’s truly tragic what has happened to arguably the best elk hunting region in the entire country/world. Prince Albert of Monaco joined Buffalo Bill Cody in 1913 to hunt the greatest elk habitat on the planet on the east border of Yellowstone National Park, which today is Area 55 and allocated a grand total 85 tags (60 general, 25 archery). It’s a crying shame.
It’s a crime against wildlife management that in 2025 Wyoming operates concentrated elk feed grounds. Geez, if only CWD would jump to cattle . . . and sheep. Any elk feed grounds need to vastly disperse – by a factor of 10, at least. Better yet, phase them out completely.
A timely article on the sheer stupidity of elk feedgrounds, the consequences of which get worse as each year feeding continues. Concern for disease on feedgrounds goes back nearly a hundred years. On the National Elk Refuge, both necrotic stomatitis, both lumpy jaw and hoof rot, as well as brucellosis, discovered in the 1930s by biologist Olaus Murie, became endemic. Murie realized immediately that as long as elk were fed, they would be disease ridden. His solution, habitat protection and development and cessation of feeding, remains especially valid now in 2025.
A bit of history. In the larger conservation community, concern over elk feedgrounds didn’t go mainstream until 1997. In that year, the Wyoming Wildlife Federation (on whose board I served) held the first ever conference on elk feedgrounds, “Are Feedgrounds Forever?” at the Snow King Conference Center in Jackson, Wyoming.
The conference explored the decades long history of feedgrounds, the arguments for and against them, and challenged attendees to consider that it was now time to stop feeding elk and secure more winter range to succor them through Wyoming’s harsh winters as well as to manage them through hunting to keep population numbers within the carrying capacity of that range. This recommendation followed Murie, who strongly believed—based upon his scientific work in and around the National Elk Refuge–elk should be managed in such a way.
In 1997, the WWF understood that this strategy faced three obstacles:
One, ranchers for whom feedgrounds were created in the first place to keep elk off private property as well as off public range ranchers considered to be reserved for domestic cattle; two, big game hunting outfitters, whose business model required large numbers of elk for paying hunters, numbers far above the capacity of native range to support (outfitters claimed “a bale of hay is worth an acre of habitat”); and
three, public opinion in western Wyoming, which over the decades had seen feeding elk as normal and a boon to the local economy as tourists ogled elk munching away on hay and alfalfa pellets.
Rationally, closing feedgrounds made perfect sense. We assumed–as the risk of brucellosis transmission by elk to cattle got worse in the 90s–that because the high densities of elk on the feedgrounds exacerbated intra-herd transmission and infection rates, thus increasing the risk to cattle, ranchers would weigh the impacts of free ranging elk against the risk of infection and cattle herd depopulation, and would therefore agree to close feedgrounds in exchange for financial support to build infrastructure to protect feedlines and haystacks. (However, they would still have to share public forage with elk). Further, we thought that the serious disease risks posed by feeding elk would convince outfitters to opt for fewer healthier elk rather than more unhealthy elk. As for public opinion, who supports a policy of maintaining diseased elk? Who wants to hunt diseased elk?
We found out that quite frankly, a lot of people. We were wrong about all three assumptions. Little did we realize in 1997 that 28 years later, in 2025, we’d still be feeding elk, despite the appearance on the feedgrounds and in western Wyoming of a fatal, density-dependent, cervid neurological condition called chronic wasting disease.
WyoFile has already pointed to the recent USGS analysis of various scenarios of rapidly increasing CWD in fed elk. I see no rational reason to doubt USGS’ findings. I find it heartening that at least some outfitters have recognized the danger and are willing to consider closing at least some feedgrounds ( I see no similar move from ranchers). But some is not enough. Without serious efforts to secure and protect habitat, particularly migration corridors, USGS’ predictions of elk population collapses are assured–with devasting ecological and economic consequences.
Unfortunately, Trump’s assault on science and the land base (drill baby drill, etc.) is doing all it can to destroy habitat and to ensure ecological collapse and eventually, economic collapse.
Robert, CWD has not wiped out Area 7’s elk herd the way wolves and bears have wiped out the GYE’s herds over the same time frame.
You are so right. YNP vistors want to see wolves and bears, so that takes priority over pretty much anything else….they spend lots of money in the state.
If I remember correctly controlling elk herds in Yellowstone was one of the talking points for introducing wolves into ranch/hunting country.
Concern for ranchers didn’t enter their minds.
I agree with the comment that we need to listen to biologists NOT politicians.
This is beyond concerning.
You have to consider that responses by outfitters to the problem is controlled by money, they all make their living by outfitting. So of course they want to kill as many as possible. As for why the populations of elk the true decline started almost 40 years ago with the introduction of the canadian grey wolf. By the time the state could start controlling the population it was almost 165% over objective. Then when
the grizzly bear was put under then endangered species act and the populations blossomed to over 1200, when the objective was 400. Now everyone wants to blame feed grounds for the proliferation of CWD. If you go back the 40 years since CWD was discovered and look at all the maps showing the proliferation year by years, it all shrinks down to an original bullseye, and in the center of that bullseye is Wyoming’s Game & Fish Sybille Wildlife Research Center. The decline of the ungulate population in the Yellowstone ecosystem is the result of years of screw ups by the Wyoming G&F, National Park System, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and federal judges. The National Elk Refuge has been on the target for years because the land is too valuable for developers wanting to increase the size of Jackson.
Of course the outfitters and ranchers don’t want the feed grounds closed. That’s self preservation for them. For outfitters it makes their job difficult. For ranchers it pushes elk onto private lands and lost graze. I wonder though, what happened to the old, very logical saying “Don’t feed the animals”? There has always been a lot of wisdom in that saying.
Sideline the business interests and let the experts make the decisions. For profit interests are just that. They have a bias for making money, not for the health of the herd. I would bet that the vast majority of Wyoming residents want to see healthy herds, and a safe source of meat on the table.
Another case of ballot box biology. Sigh.