.45Cole,
There is no question that in the long run, a fencing system needs to be constructed around the hay storage area.
The green fields in the summer are more problematic however. For one thing, the amount of fencing needed would be prohibitive. We are in what is effectively a desert and when the grasses etc dry up by early summer, the elk turn their thoughts toward us. It is often that we have 100 head on our fields in early August starting in the evening (daylight still).
The elk create and use the same breached fence paths summer, fall and winter and I envision PIR and ultra sonic sensors as a early warning system that they are approaching. I give them enough time to get away from those entrances and then give them the business.
As far as neighbors complaint about noise, not much because they are way farther away than I am. This is not just a pyro based system either and often pyro can not be used as the dry conditions around the perimeter preclude it.
Where else will the elk go?
There is lots of other agriculture and beyond that they have a lot of State lands and an entire Reservation to hole up on. The bad thing is that this Reservation is stuck with perhaps 20,000 wild horses they can not control due to slaughter restrictions. Those horses are destroying the environment for the elk. On my side of the ridge the horses rarely go and the grass is way better.
As far as fencing the hay stacks the kind of fence really matters. I am not going to say your mesh idea has no merit but we do have conventional electric fence and the elk “laugh at it”. Luckily much of the soil conditions are such that I have been given an idea that leads to a very solid and less expensive solution that I will not go into here. This will take time though and in the meantime I need the summertime control and the same equipment relocated will assist us in the winter until we get the hay stack fencing figured out.
We can get the hay stacks effectively fenced and then the elk may turn to pawing and digging up the dormant hay fields as they have been known to do as well.
Our hay operation began there in the late ‘60’s and there were no elk bothering. We had a brief stint of 20 head about three different winters in the 80’s. But by the early ‘90’s things started to get worse and by 2000 things were full on.
The winters of 2015/16 and 16/17 were crushers. We had 300 head and 200 head respectively every night until the snow left.
There are some reasons for the change. The State of Washington had a legislative cap on the local elk herd of 3000 in the entire basin. That sunsetted in the early ‘80’s
The Wildlife department over restricted Hunter opportunity and the herd then (by their numbers) grew to 15,000. After a big ruckus they scaled back to a claimed herd of 9,500.
There is a lot of hockus pockus I figure because I watched an “expert” of theirs “explain” how they came up with their numbers!
A local rancher challenged their claim that the herd had been scaled back from their first number of 15,000 to the new number of 9,500.
The expert got laughed at in front of about 250 people!
I will give that one time to soak in. There is a back story on that one. I will tell it shortly!
Three44s