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| What do elk like to hear? |
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Daniel Cox |
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| Like hard-bitten bluegrass fans, elk like the high, lonesome sound. Evidence suggests that sounds toward the upper end of the register are most pleasing to their ears. High-pitched squeals and chirps spoken by a herd are a socially positive sound, much like the sound of children playing or a mother singing a lullaby. Conversely, low-pitched growls and barks serve as a warning, such as the bark of a spooked cow.
A bull’s bugle has a combination of both—the high-pitched whistle carries over great distances and the low, guttural barks and grunts resound in dense timber, while also declaring a bull’s size. Often times after a bull runs off an intruding bull, he’ll slap the ground with his hoof and give a series of concussive woofs.
Scientific data on how high, low and far elk can hear is fuzzy, but biologists speculate an elk’s hearing is comparable to a white-tailed deer’s. In other words, formidable—especially since they can rotate their ears a full 180 degrees, allowing them to pinpoint possible threats, such as a hunter who didn’t see the pinecone underfoot until it was too late.
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