DRYDEN — A small group of elk has been nibbling on trees in Ray Schmitten’s orchard since Sunday, entertaining the farmer’s family and causing some damage to the newly pruned fruit trees.
The elk are part of one of the largest herds in memory — 80 to 100 strong — that has been roaming the Dryden and Peshastin area this winter, causing damage to orchards and creating traffic hazards on roads.
“We enjoy seeing them, but it’s kind of a bittersweet pill,” Schmitten said Tuesday after watching the elk once again wander among his fruit trees on Pine Flats Loop Road, south of U.S. 2 and Dryden. “They really can cause a lot of damage, particularly to the trees that have already been pruned.”
Schmitten has counted as many as 72 of the animals on his land at one time. A neighbor counted more than 100 at once.
Elk are roughly twice as heavy as mule deer. Females average about 500 pounds and males about 700 pounds.
The unusually large herd is believed to be one that spends most of the year in the Blewett Pass area, 15 to 20 miles south of Peshastin. Each winter, they head downhill in search of food, either heading east toward Malaga or north toward Peshastin and Dryden.
For many years, the herd was small, numbering 15 to 20, said Sgt. Doug Ward of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. But in the last few years, it has been growing, reaching about 100 this year.
The elk have caused problems in orchards for years, Ward said. But the smaller herds caused much less damage.
“What’s unusual this year is that we’ve got quite a few more than we’ve ever had before,” Ward said. “Where the growers used to tolerate 15 to 20 elk, they aren’t tolerating 80 elk.”
He said the elk come in search of pears left on the ground after harvest.
The problem is that when they scrape away the snow with their hooves, they can damage or tear up sprinkler systems. They also rub bark off the trees, nibble on the branches and bite the tops off or even uproot young trees.
“Some trees they eat right down to broomsticks,” Ward said. “The growers don’t like that.”
The snow cover makes it impossible to estimate the extent of the damage.
Ward said he has visited or received complaints from about 20 orchards in the Peshastin-Dryden area where the elk have congregated and caused damage this winter.
The animals also have crossed the Wenatchee River and been spotted along U.S. 2. Ward said wildlife officers set off firecrackers last week to chase about 20 to 30 of them away from the highway.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife held a special hunt starting in mid-December to help control the elk population and drive them out of the Wenatchee River valley. As of last week, Ward said 10 elk had been killed.
Ward said that while the special hunt is a short-term fix for the problem, it is not the ideal way to control the elk population because it brings hunters too close to homes and orchards.
Instead, the agency needs to find a way to reduce the population during the regular hunting season, which starts in September and runs through November, when the animals are still in the mountains, he said.
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