Elk signs, yellow, brown, muddy

Signs along the highways, going north or west from here, say "Elk", with a distance, such as 55 km. Or they show an outline of an elk, with the distance.

Elk sign, Highway 19.

I keep my eyes open, watching the road and the bushes along both sides. I never see an elk. Not in the daytime, not at night. Many deer, at any hour, but no elk. Not a hair.

On a hillside above the Salmon River, I found a different kind of elk sign.

Elk scat. About the size of brown marbles. Fairly fresh, still moist.

A closer look. They're slightly squarish, a hair longer than they are wide. That bit of glitter at the left is ice.

Farther along, I found more:

This scat is older, drying and splitting. My fingernail is 1.5 cm. at the wide point, so the largest of these is about 3 cm. long. The scat contains quite a bit of fiber; their diet at this time of year includes dried twigs, branches, whatever has survived the winter weather.

Elk droppings are bigger and longer than deer droppings. Moose are even larger yet. If the droppings are dry and cracked, it is because they are old and not left there recently. If they still glitter & shine from moisture and each one spreads like grainy peanut butter or room temperature chocolate chips when you slide your boot across them, it could have been minutes, or an hour or two, depending on the weather. If they are still steaming in the cold morning air, they’re close by!  (All About Moose)

No steam seen. The elk had left the immediate area. I wandered about, looking behind piles of logging slash, to be sure. No elk. But I did find this:

There's a baby!

Near a stream, where the water crossed a logging truck access, the gravel was soft, so that elk feet sunk deeply. Here, and nowhere else, I found the little tracks of a calf, still too small to make an impression on more solid ground. The deep end is the rear of the track.

With my muddy shoe for comparison. The bottom of the track is about 4 inches long. The scruffy area at top is caused by her dewclaws, which will leave no impression on a more solid surface. She and her calf were walking peacefully; when she runs, her toes spread apart in a V.

Another print near the muddy area. The dewclaw marks are clear.

So: still not an elk, but closer. Maybe next time.