Beautiful Buglers of Henry County

Elk’s story is an All American tale. They are descendents of fearless explorers who migrated, like most native Americans, across the Bering land bridge from Asia during the late Ice Ages. Once in North America they became indomitable pioneers, adapting to all ecosystems except tundra, deserts and the gulf coast. They lived symbiotically with American Indians of the west where Kootenai, Cree, Blackfoot and Ojibwas fashioned blankets, footwear, clothing and housing from their hides. Plains Indians considered elk holy. Their teeth symbolized the life force to the Lakota.

Elk population in America grew to 10 million before the coming of the first Europeans, who misidentified them and named after German-Scandinavian words (elch, elg) for moose. With bulls weighing 700 pounds and sporting antlers four feet long, elk came to represent all the Europeans thought brave and fearsome in the wild. Males would fight, sometimes the death, during the rut, or mating season. Females would kill anything that threatened their young. Their bugle, or mating cry, became the mighty music of the frontier.

Elk were so successful adapting, they became a threat to more domestic livestock. Farmers and ranchers feared their fierceness and their susceptibility to infectious diseases. Unlike the Native Americans, Europeans hunted them to near extinction. Less than 1 million exist today and of the six subspecies that inhabited North America in historical times, only four remain. The others have been gone for over a century.

“Elk flourished in Iowa but the last wild elk here was believed to have been killed in Kossuth County in the mid 1880’s, though one stray was seen in Marshall and Jasper counties in 2006,” explained Richard Garrrels, a past president of the Iowa Elk Association.

Today, Garrels is one of about 30 Iowa ranchers have re-introduced elk to the state. A retired schoolteacher/farmer from Henry County, he decided to convert some corn and bean fields into an open range for elk 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. 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 stated matter of factly, adding that elk are a transitional step into full retirement.

“I rent most of my acreage for cash crop farming and save this section for the elk. And I don’t ever have get up before dawn for chores. The elk are pretty independent and low maintenance,” he explained.

Garrels’ 30 head of elk are all Rocky Mountain sub species. He’s never had a problem with diseases.

“I have never had a veterinarian visit other than for calving,” he said.

Garrels thinks that’s a result from the measures he takes to keep his elk up to safety standards for meat sales. He tests his herd regularly for brucelosis, TB and chronic waste disease. That also facilitates sales of live elk across state lines. Meat sales weren’t the main motivation for most elk ranchers.

“Lots of people got into elk in the 1990’s when velvet was going for $60 a pound,” Garrels explained.

Male elk bulls grow and shed their antlers each year. Growing antlers are covered by a soft layer of vascularized skin known as velvet. Velvet is shed in the summer when the antlers have fully developed and is medicinally valued, particularly by Asians, for is aphrodisiac and mood elevation properties. A male elk can produce 25 pounds of antler velvet annually.
“This decade, the price went down to $10 to $15, after Asians backed out of the market after the mad cow scare. I don’t even bother with it. There’s more value in selling whole antlers without the hassle. I just sold a bull for $5000,” he explained.

“I can cover my costs selling elk meat to four restaurants and a few private consumers, plus selling at my concession stand at the Old Threshers Reunion (Labor Day weekend in Mount Pleasant). What I can’t cover of course is the lost income from prime farm land that could otherwise being earning with cash crops. The people making real money are the ones with low overhead, meaning cheaper land than this, who raise elk to sell for hunting,” Garrels explained.

Garrels keeps his bulls separated by a system of double fencing he developed over the years.

“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 fence, bugling will go on 24 - 7 during rutting season and the fence will come down. I lost one bull that way, gored to death by another. I don’t keep a bull who’s too aggressive.

Both Richard and his wife Liz described bugling as “beautiful sound” - the males whistle and the females chirp, “sort of like a cat’s meow.” They said they have never heard a complaint from neighbors.

“Compared to peacocks, it’s musical,” said Liz, who has raised both.
Richards feeds grain to the elk grain for a few months before rutting. Otherwise, their diet consists of grasses in warm weather and leaves after grass goes dormant. The fall and winter diet has a particularly Iowa adaptation.

“They love oak leaves but they seem really disappointed when I throw out a bag of maple leaves. They also prefer leafy alfalfa to grasses. It works out well, I get leaves from the city.

Elk ranching is seasonal. During the summer, elk eat almost constantly, consuming between 10 to 15 pounds daily. Fall brings rutting season and since gestation periods are 240 to 262 days, all Garrels’s calves are born between mid May and June.

Richard has won blue ribbons for his elk recipes at the Iowa State Fair, Taste of Iowa, Farm Bureau’s cook-offs “Wine & Tuxedo” and “Buckskinner.” He divides his elk meat into backstraps, which include tenderloins and ribeyes, and burger trim. Elk has a very healthy profile for a read meat, with only about 40% the calories, 20 % of the fat and 80 % of the cholesterol of lean ground beef. Tasting somewhere between beef and venison, elk is also higher in protein than either beef or chicken, and it’s a good source of iron phosphorous and zinc. So burgers are guilt free for dieters.

Four restaurants use Garrels’ elk burger. Jerry’s, Keo’s Bar & Grill, and Butch’s River Rock Café in Mount Pleasant, plus Short Stop in New London. The BrownStone in Mount Pleasant uses his steaks.

“I sell the elk burgers like crazy,” explained Kim Butch Bittle, who owns both the River Rock and the BrownStone.

Both Bittle’s restaurants have an pioneer spirit in which elk fits well. On a Skunk River park site, the River Rock building was built as a railroad depot in the mid-1800s. It has been a restaurant since the late 1940s.

The Brownstone has the look of Victorian hotel, with a lobby and different dining rooms. Bittle named one Edison, the other Carlyle, and there is the ballroom which is intended for banquets. Bittle said the building's history includes being a stop on the Underground Railroad, a vocational school and an elementary school.Bittle was chef at the Iris, an icon itself. After closing of Iris, after more than 50 years, Butch opened Brownstone for a test run one Sunday last fall and 175 guests showed up.

Richard Garrels’ Elk Ribeye

4 rib eye elk steaks
For marinade
Fourth cup honey
Three fourths cup vegetable oil
Fourth cup soy sauce
Clove garlic, minced
1 T. dried minced onion
2 T. white vinegar
Half t. ginger

Marinate steaks overnight.
Sear both sides of steaks. Grill to desired doneness. 140 degrees (rare) is recommended for flavor.