The Iowan

In the March/April 2010 issue of The Iowan

beautiful buglers
Henry County Elk Rancher Goes Wild

[ Story by Jim Duncan |   Photography by Paul Gates ]

North American elk share history with human Native Americans. Descendants of fearless explorers, both migrated across the Bering land bridge during the late Ice Ages. In North America they became indomitable pioneers, adapting to most ecosystems and thriving in the fertile loam and thick forests of Iowa. With bulls weighing 700 pounds and sporting antlers four feet long, elk were regarded as holy by Plains Indians, who used them for food, housing, clothing, and spirituality. America’s elk population grew to 10 million before the first Europeans arrived, misidentified them, and named them after Scandinavian-German words for moose.

To Europeans, elk represented wild and fearsome aspects of the frontier. Males would fight to the death during their rut. Females might kill anything that threatened their young. An elk’s bugle, or mating cry, became a mighty music of the land. They were so successful adapting that they threatened domestic livestock. Farmers and ranchers reacted, hunting them to near extinction. Less than one million exist today, and of the six subspecies that inhabited North America in historical times, only four remain.

“The last wild elk in Iowa was believed to have been killed in Kossuth County in the mid-1880s, though one was seen in Marshall and Jasper counties in 2006,” explains Richard Garrrels, past president of the Iowa Elk Breeders Association. Today Garrels is one of about 30 Iowa ranchers who have reintroduced elk to the state.

elk economics
A retired schoolteacher and farmer from Henry County, Garrels decided to convert some corn and bean fields into an elk range in 1995. “I had arranged to go elk hunting out west, and that didn’t work out. So I decided to raise my own right here,” he explains. “I had raised quarter horses for years, so this wasn’t anything too new. Elk have breeders associations and pedigrees just like other livestock.”

Garrels rents most of his acreage for cash-crop farming, saving one section for elk. “Now I don’t ever have get up before dawn for chores,” he says, adding that elk were a good transitional step toward full retirement. “The elk are pretty independent and low-maintenance. I haven’t had a single veterinarian visit other than for calving.”

Garrels keeps around 30 head of the Rocky Mountain elk subspecies, covering his costs by selling elk meat to five local restaurants and a few private consumers, plus vending at his concession stand at the Old Threshers Reunion. “What I can’t cover is the lost income from not renting prime farmland,” explains Garrels.

Meat sales, however, have not been the main motivation for most elk ranchers, according to Garrels. “Lots of people got into elk in the 1990s, when velvet was going for $60 a pound.”

Elk bulls grow and shed their antlers annually. When growing, antlers are covered by a soft layer of skin known as velvet. Every year, each male elk sheds up to 25 pounds of velvet, which is valued for medicinal and aphrodisiac properties, particularly by Asians. “This decade, the price went down to $10 to $15 after Asians backed out of the market following the mad cow panic. I don’t even bother with it,” says Garrels. “There’s more value, without the hassle of collecting velvet, in selling whole antlers and animals. I just sold a bull for $5,000.”

Elk ranching is seasonal. During the summer, elk eat almost constantly. Fall brings rutting season, and since gestation periods are 240 to 262 days, all Garrels’ calves are born between mid-May and June. For a few months before rutting, he feeds grain to his elk. Otherwise, their diet consists of grasses in warm weather and leaves after grass goes dormant. Garrels’ elk have developed a taste for a particular Iowa flavor. “They love oak leaves and they seem really disappointed when I throw out a bag of maple leaves. It works out well,” says Garrels, who buys his leaves from the city of Mount Pleasant.

Garrels tests regularly for brucellosis, TB, and chronic waste disease in order to keep his elk up to safety standards for meat sales. Through years of trial and error, he worked to develop a system of double fencing to keep his bulls separated. “If I leave the animals in one pen, the dominant bull will wear himself out keeping the others away from his cows. If I separate them with a single fence, bugling will go on 24-7 during the rut, and my fence will come down. I lost one bull that way, gored to death by another one,” recalls Garrels.

That bugling, say both Garrels and his wife, Liz, has never drawn a complaint from neighbors. “Not at all. The males whistle and the females chirp, sort of like a cat’s meow. Compared to peacocks’ calls, it’s beautiful music,” says Liz, who has raised both.

elk for dinner
Garrels sells elk just two ways: as backstrap roasts (loins and ribeyes) and as burger meat. Elk meat has a healthy profile — about 40 percent of the calories, 20 percent of the fat, and 80 percent of the cholesterol of lean ground beef. Elk is also higher in protein than beef or chicken and is a good source of iron, phosphorous, and zinc. Four Henry County restaurants sell Garrels’ elk burgers: Short Stop in New London, Keo’s Bar & Grill and Jerry’s in Mount Pleasant, and Butch’s River Rock Cafe in Oakland Mills. The BrownStone in Mount Pleasant sells his steaks.

“I sell elk burgers like crazy,” explains Kim “Butch” Bittle, who owns both the River Rock Cafe and the BrownStone. Those restaurants have pioneer spirits that suit elk. The River Rock was originally a railroad depot, built in the mid-1800s, when Oakland Mills thrived with a grist mill and a button factory. Skunk River floods drove away those businesses and even the railroad.

Now Oakland Mills is a free-spirited, unincorporated community within Oakland Mills Nature Center and Park.

The BrownStone’s history includes being a stop on the Underground Railroad and a vocational school. Bittle fashioned the look of a Victorian hotel complete with lobby, two different dining rooms, and a ballroom for banquets.

Recipe
Richard Garrels’
blue ribbon elk ribeye

¼ cup honey
¾ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup soy sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon dried minced onion
2 tablespoons white vinegar
½ teaspoon ginger
4 elk ribeye steaks

Mix first seven ingredients. Marinate steaks overnight, covered, in the refrigerator.
Sear both sides of steaks. Grill to desired doneness. (140ºF [rare] is recommended for best flavor.)

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