With the colder weather, area farmers are getting hit hard with a significant number of deer and elk coming to the valley to find food and this has left the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel hopping to keep up with the demands to protect crops.

One of the hardest hit areas this year have been farmers and ranchers on the west side of the Green River in Jensen. According to Wildlife Resource Biologist Charlie Greenwood, this is an ongoing problem, but made much worse this year with the colder weather.

“On the other side of the river we have a herd of elk totaling about 200 that are harbored there,” explained Greenwood. “When they are out of feed, they cross the river and come over to the Thackers, Snows, Chews and others in the area to find feed.”

Greenwood explained this problem happens each year and they have tried to reduce the number of “resident agriculture elk” in that herd, but it is a growing herd.

There are several options that ranchers have to control the elk damage. Each rancher is allocated a number of tags and vouchers that they can give out to hunters to reduce the number of elk in the herd. The state also has a list of hunters in a depredation hunt pool, as well as unsuccessful hunters in neighboring hunting areas are contacted to come in and fill tags in special depredation hunts.

To date, there have been about 30 cows and bulls taken out of the herd since Dec. 15 when the problems started to escalate.

Greenwood described the damage that elk cause when feeding on cut hay. Most people in this area have constructed fences around stacks of hay but there are several feed lots in the area that do not have the areas fenced to keep the animals out. Elk are known to tear down fences, then they will tromp and scatter hay.

Some farmers have chopped hay that has been trampled by they elk and made uneatable for cows because of the deification that takes place.

Right now, it wouldn’t matter what a farmer wanted to construct around his stacks, the DWR does not have any more product available.

“This has been such a heavy winter, that there are all kinds of deer and elk coming into the valley this year to find feed, plus there are a lot of unprotected haystacks out there, and we don’t have any more material,” explained Greenwood. He stated that material is coming in almost weekly, but all of that has been been promised out.

“We can even budget to fence around larger feed lots like we did up in Tridell last year at a dairy farm,” said Greenwood, “But it won’t happen right now.”

Jensen resident John Snow stated that the damage is significant even after working for the past 30 years with the DWR to acquire materials to fence the animals out. Snow pointed out that the depredation nts have been working, but it took two weeks for the elk to take the hint and move out of the area and go back across the Green River to the Blue Mountain side.

He described the elk as eating the bottom sides of stacks, as well as crawling up on top of the chopped hay and bedding down on and reliving themselves on it.. “Nothing wants to eat it after an elk has done that,” said Snow.

Snow stated that they used strings of firecrackers to scare the herds before they resorted to getting hunters to slowly reduce the number of elk in the herd.

Feeding elk is an expensive job for the farmers. Snow explained that you can feed about 500 head of cows and calves on 8 ton of hay. “This group of elk, untouched, could wipe out 100 ton of hay in three days,” said Snow. “Plus the damage they do the remainder of the crop that makes it unusable for anything.”

“The land owners on the west side of the river in Jensen have been very tolerant and very good to work with,” explained Greenwood. “They have dealt with this for a number of years and they are good to recognize that we are doing what we can in a difficult situation.”

“We are not to the point of eradicating the herd yet, but we do want to significantly reduce the herd count in that area,” concluded Greenwood.

Property owners can, after 72 hours of making a legal complaint and giving wildlife officials time to fix the problem themselves, shoot the animals themselves. But most prefer to work with officials and then let hunters take the animals by giving them voucher permits.