After the snow burned off at the tail end of last winter, some 480 elk wandered away from the Dell Creek Feedground.
The tawny ungulates left tight quarters at the 35-acre feeding site north of Bondurant, migrating toward their summer ranges high in the Gros Ventre Range and beyond. Most of the elk went off to points unknown, and their individual fates, likewise, remain unknown.
But 14 of the adult female elk departed with tracking collars. And three of them — over 20% of the tracked animals — died in the high country in the months that followed. Cow elk, which can live over 20 years, rarely keel over in the summer, a season when adult elk are least likely to die.
Wyoming biologists were unable to reach the cow elk carcasses before nature and decomposition ran its course. A critical datapoint — whether the elk died from or carried always-lethal chronic wasting disease — was unretrievable.
“Although they reached the carcasses within a couple of days of the mortality signal, the carcasses had been completely scavenged, and no samples were available,” Wyoming Game and Fish Department staffers wrote in response to emailed questions.
The state agency declined a verbal interview for this story.
The unusual summertime mortalities added to suspicions that the degenerative, incurable prion disease was continuing to advance in the elk population that uses the Dell Creek Feedground. Infected animals were found within Wyoming’s feedground system for the first time and at four locations in the winter of 2024/’25, but signs pointed toward Dell Creek elk being the farthest along in the CWD epidemic’s curve.
Over the winter there were six dead CWD-positive animals found within or immediately adjacent to the Bondurant-area feedground, which operates on permitted Bridger-Teton National Forest land. Although that is just 1.3% of the elk tallied at Dell Creek last winter, many more likely have the disease and are destined to die in the months and years ahead.
“Given how long elk can live with the disease, your minimum prevalence is going to be four times [higher than 1.3%],” said Hank Edwards, a retired Game and Fish Wildlife Health Laboratory supervisor. “It’s closer to 5%, probably.”
An elk herd with 5% prevalence of chronic wasting disease in itself wouldn’t be alarming. Statewide, 3% of elk tested positive for the malady last year, and there are Wyoming elk herds that have sustained, and even thrived with, low rates of the disease for decades.
The worrisome factor is where disease rates go from here. When it infects big proportions of a herd, CWD has the capacity to devastate ungulates. Major population impacts are already on display in some Wyoming mule deer herds. Because of the feedgrounds, which are proven spreaders of disease, wildlife biologists expect that elk that gather tightly for months at feeding sites like Dell Creek will see much higher rates of the disease and, eventually, diminished populations that vastly reduce hunting opportunities.
Now, wildlife managers and the public are about to discover what actually happens. For that reason, Edwards called the coming year at the Dell Creek Feedground “so important.”
“This next year could be really interesting,” he said. “It’ll hopefully provide some clues.”
In the meantime, he added, it’s too early to make specific predictions about prevalence this coming winter.
There are some bright spots in the data available.
Elk hunters in the two hunt areas nearest to the Dell Creek Feedground have so far encountered very low rates of CWD in tissue samples they’ve submitted, Game and Fish officials wrote in the email. There have been zero detections out of 151 samples in hunt area 84, and only one of 33 samples collected in hunt area 87 has shown signs of the disease — an elk killed by a hunter this fall.
Those numbers are likely to ramp up as CWD becomes more established. In tandem, biologists and wardens are ramping up efforts to monitor the herd and better understand how it’s being impacted.
The agency’s staff are exploring the use of a new test, known as “RT-QuIC,” that allows them to quickly test infectious CWD prions at low concentrations, even from live animal tissue. They’ve also collected soil and fecal samples for future testing, according to Game and Fish’s email, and they plan to GPS-collar additional Dell Creek elk this coming feeding season.
For now, there are no plans to change the feeding regime in response to CWD’s rise in the Hoback Basin.
Wyoming’s relatively new elk feedground plan allows for making changes only when consensus is reached, and it calls for addressing the state’s six feedground-dependent elk herds two at a time. First up for review were the Jackson and Pinedale herds, and specific plans for feedgrounds in those areas are “being reviewed by stakeholders” and a public review is forthcoming, according to the email.
Game and Fish officials won’t begin examining changes to the Dell Creek Feedground until it starts a separate plan for the Upper Green River Herd. Based on the pace of the in-the-works herd plans, it could be years away — and by that time they’ll know a lot more about how CWD is impacting the Hoback Basin’s elk.
Can’t identify what killed the 3 collared elk. It’s unusual the experts say. Hmm! I believe apex predators still lurk in the summertime. I suspect accidents and other injuries still happen in the summertime.
The only point of this story is to continue to spread the fear of CWD. SHAMEFUL!!
Virtually all wildlife scientists agree that CWD will likely result in significant mortality in cervids, especially those that are densely concentrated as on Wyoming’s feedgrounds. And the infectious prions remain in the environment for many years. There are many papers and expert recommendations on best management practices for wild cervids in the face of this deadly, infectious disease, all of which counsel not to artificially feed or concentrate them. My gmail is lloydjdorsey
So the wolves run the elk off the feed ground and you come up with some disease to blame it on.
Two things stick out to me. The first is that our wildlife agency had no comments. The second is that any changes in the future of feeding is built on some “consensus.”
Again we do not hear “the rest of the story”. CWD has been around since the late 60’s as far as we know, so have all the elk feedgrounds around Pinedale, Bondurant, Big Piney, Afton, coincidence? One thing to note, CWD is lethal, as the article states. The article also states that it is unknown how long ungulates can live with CWD. Well, age also carries a 100% death rate. Elk are more populous in Wyoming in this era than they ever have been. That I do know. While I think that CWD should be monitored and more should be learned about it. If three cows died in a grizzly and wolf heavily populated area, should it be a huge concern?
CWD could never do what wolves and bears have done to the elk populations of the Rocky Mountain west and the GYE. The Laramie Peak elk herd is documented proof of that fact, their numbers flourish after 40 years of CWD exposure, vs. a collapse in the GYE after 30 years of wolves and unchecked griz population.
Elk NATURALLY bunch together in winter regardless of whether they are being fed or not. There is obviously an agenda at play with the incessant call to end supplemental feeding.
In 1998, the Wyoming Wildlife Federation (on whose board I served) held the first ever conference on elk feedgrounds, “Are Feedgrounds Forever?” at the Headwaters Center in Dubois, 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 well-known wildlife biologist and conservationist Olaus Murie’s recommendation in 1951 that elk should be managed in such a way. Indeed, managing elk this way has been the goal of the Wyoming Game & Fish Commission from the very beginning, as with the Spence Moriarity/Inberg Roy Wildlife Habitat Area east of Dubois, known locally as the East Fork. The East Fork is twice the size of the National Elk Refuge. It is the crown jewel of Wyoming’s wildlife winter ranges.
In 1998, 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. One business local to Jackson ran, and still runs, horse drawn wagons full of tourists onto the National Elk Refuge during winter so the tourists can “experience” the thrill of closeness to exotic, Yellowstone elk.
Rationally, closing feedgrounds made perfect sense. We assumed–as the risk of brucellosis transmission by elk to cattle got worse–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, diseased elk. As for public opinion, who supports a policy of maintaining diseased elk? Who wants to hunt diseased elk?
Quite frankly, a lot of people. We were wrong about all three assumptions. Little did we realize in 1998 that 27 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.
So here we are nearly three decades later. Our fears about the spread of CWD on the feedgrounds have come true. In response, all we’ve had from G&F is talk and more talk and more delay. I call it criminal negligence. I recommend that we quit talking and that we sue in state court to hold G&F accountable for violating its public trust obligation to protect a vital resource, elk, as well as the habitat elk and other wildlife depend upon. The remedy to seek from the courts? Closure of all state feedgrounds.
Unreal, 3 cow elk die with zero proof of CWD and you run with the same old tired, politically motivated narrative. You are correct, they didn’t just “keel over”….
Wolves don’t kill elk in the summer months, do they?
Lets look at the collapse of the GYE elk herds in the past 20 years, what caused it? It certainly was not CWD.
Wolves, Mike with a bunch of bears hanging out on calving grounds sprinkled on top.
I also can’t believe the gall to write this tidbit,
“eventually, diminished populations that vastly reduce hunting opportunities.”
THAT already exists today for elk in the entire GYE and it wasn’t CWD. Areas 79+75 from 2000 tags to 20 tags in 30 years. Still waiting for an article on that complete and total collapse.
the majority of elk taken by predators in summer are likely calves. The Jackson elk hunt areas, where I’ve lived for 50 years, can be considered as part of a metapopulation of elk throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (the Wind River tribal lands elk herds , Dubois elk herds, Sunlight Basin elk, southcentral Montana elk, southwest Montana elk herds, eastern Idaho elk herds, and western Wyoming elk herds) that currently numbers many many tens of thousands of elk. Individuals from all those herds intermix over the years, and of course are not geographically distinct from hundreds of thousands of elk in outlying areas of those states and adjoining states and provinces. Rocky Mountain elk are abundant and widely distributed. Locally, elk populations and distributions naturally wax and wane according to the effects of human hunting, predation, disease, weather, forage, human developments, loss or improvement of habitats, etc.. As for elk hunting permits in the Jackson region, I suggest looking at hunt areas where the G&F issues hundreds (and hundreds!) of cow/calf or antlerless tags or any elk seasons.
Lloyd, nice try but you reply is full of B.S. The article wasnt specific when these elk died (“in the months that followed”) elk usually leave wintering areas in March, calve in June. They could have still been pregnant when killed for all we know. Your very first sentence includes the word “likely”, and you have no idea what killed the elk.
Elk populations throughout the GYE have been at nearly un-huntable numbers, for years, and there is one reason. Over predation (mostly wolves) NOT over hunting.
I have hunted in units 79 and 75 since 1989 to 3 years ago when the tags were cut to 40 then 20, hunted the Sunlight Crandall area as well. I KNOW what the facts are regarding those units and the collapse of elk numbers/allocated tags. You can try explain it away with best you can, but you cant cover up the fact that the ability for what used to be thousands of families to get meat for the year in the GYE, has gone to dozens at best in most units.
And dont talk about how healthy elk populations are where no wolves exist (widely distributed). It is irrelevant. Telling hunters to find another area that has elk… Would you have told the Native Americans to go find another place that has bison when they were wiped out?
Like the article, your political bias gets in the way of admitting the fact of what the #1 threat to elk populations in the GYE was, is, and will continue to be. Mainly wolf and some grizzly predation.