Too many elk
Every Idaho farmer expects to have a few big game animals feeding in their pastures from time to time.
But to have 1,000 elk spending the winter on your farm is a bit extreme!
That’s what happened to three landowners who farm just north of Interstate 84 in Bliss during the winter of 2024-2025. “We need to get to a manageable number of animals,” said Chad Helmick, a rancher in Bliss with Helmick Cattle Co., LLC.
Adds neighboring rancher Katie Dennis, “The elk are really nice to look at. We used to have 30 head of bulls walk through, that was kind of cool, then we had 400-500 elk walk through, eating along the way. Now we’re feeding hay.”
Dennis runs a cow-calf operation with her husband, John. They prefer not to feed hay to their cattle herd in the winter, but the elk were eating their wheat stubble.
There’s a strip of sagebrush habitat on BLM land next to the freeway. The elk cruise back and forth between public and private land.
“They’re kind of hard on fences, following the cows around, it’s massive number of animals,” Dennis says. “They just go where they want to.”
Officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) are perplexed as to why there’s so many elk in the farmers’ fields.
“This is a phenomenon really started 4-5 years ago,” said Mike McDonald, IDFG Regional Wildlife Manager in Jerome. “We started to see large groups of elk taking up residence in the lower reaches of the Bennett Front. And this year, for whatever reason, it kind of hit its climax.”
“They arrived around Christmas, and they arrived in big numbers, 1,000 elk in one herd. Those elk stayed, they did not leave.”
At a bigger picture level, Idaho’s ranchers and rangelands play a critical component for all of the cycles of wildlife in Idaho. Figuring out how to manage that is an ongoing challenge for Idaho Fish and Game and landowners.
