In March 2023, a rooster elk that had been ruminating in northeastern Minnesota’s haunts close to the French border for several years died. Wildlife officials sent bone samples to a laboratory in Montana in an effort to ascertain the animal’s age. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources( DNR ), the results indicated that it was 20 years old and” very old.”
Rocky Mountain ( Photo ) Foundation for Elk
The Grand Forks Herald was informed by DNR area wildlife director Scott Laudenslager that” someone 20 years older, that’s actually getting up there.”
The Matson’s Laboratory in Manhattan, Montana, a facility that uses cementum analysis from animal teeth to precisely age dozens of wildlife species globally, was profiled in many previous Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation Bugle magazine articles. The majority of warrior crops, according to test user Carolyn Nistler, are between four and six decades old on average out of the tens of thousands of elk the facility has aged over the past 50 years. And despite being uncommon, seeing a 20-year-old deer is not unusual. A 32-year-old cattle moose from Pennsylvania was the oldest animal the lab had aged.
A necropsy did not identify a specific cause of death for the Minnesota elk, but it did act out severe wasting disease.
The Grand Forks Herald reported that Laudenslager was” gaunt and that sort of thing, but no actual smoking weapons.” ” Perhaps more than anything, old time.”
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is the cause.
