A bull elk bugling against a mountain backdrop is one of the defining images of the American West. In Texas, it is also the image of a contradiction.
Free-ranging elk roam portions of the Trans-Pecos today, yet Texas does not classify them as game animals. They are legally treated as exotics, putting them in a dramatically different management category than white-tailed deer, mule deer, pronghorn and desert bighorn sheep. Spend enough time around Texas hunters and wildlife enthusiasts and sooner or later someone will explain why.
“Elk aren’t native to Texas.”
There is a problem with that statement.
It isn’t true.
The evidence for native elk in Texas isn’t based on a single old story or someone’s interpretation of what Texas wildlife should look like. It comes from historical eyewitness accounts, archaeological remains, radiocarbon-dated elk bones, prehistoric evidence and modern genetic research. Even the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) acknowledges the historical presence of elk.
So how did a native Texas animal become an exotic?
That story takes us from Spanish explorers and ancient archaeological sites to free-ranging elk in the mountains of West Texas — and finally to the Texas Legislature in 1997.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Says It
Before digging into centuries-old journals or archaeological evidence, consider what TPWD currently says about elk.
On its official elk species page, the agency states:
“Historical evidence indicates that elk may have been present over much of Texas.”
TPWD further notes that by the late 1800s, records indicated elk remained in the Guadalupe Mountains of Far West Texas. The agency also acknowledges that free-ranging elk currently exist across a large portion of West Texas.
That alone should give pause to anyone making the blanket claim that elk aren’t native to Texas, but it is only the beginning. One of the most comprehensive examinations of the subject was conducted by Richardson B. Gill, Christopher Gill, Reeda Peel and Javier Vasquez. Their study, Are Elk Native to Texas? Historical and Archaeological Evidence for the Natural Occurrence of Elk in Texas, was published in the Journal of Big Bend Studies.
The researchers assembled evidence from history, archaeology, morphology and genetics. Their conclusion was not that elk might occasionally have wandered across the Texas line. They concluded that native elk occurred across Texas before their extirpation.
Elk on the Canadian River
The written record reaches back more than four centuries. In 1601, Spanish governor of New Mexico Don Juan de Oñate explored country northeast of Santa Fe. Along the Canadian River, his party encountered an animal that certainly didn’t sound like a whitetail.
The account described deer as large as horses traveling in herds numbering in the hundreds.
“Translation: Elk,” I wrote when I first explored this history.
That wasn’t an isolated report. In 1759, Capt. Juan Angel de Oyarzún reported elk in Texas, describing animals known as buros whose bodies and antlers were substantially larger than deer. His account even noted the use of their antlers by Comanches in making bows.
Then there was East Texas. In 1772, French Capt. Athanase de Mézières described “red deer” — the European relative of elk and terminology Europeans sometimes applied to them — in country between present-day Nacogdoches and the Sabine River.
These weren’t all reports from mountains along the New Mexico border. The researchers documented reports from the Panhandle and North Texas through Central and East Texas and into South Texas.
That matters because the old idea was not merely that Texas once had elk. A common assumption has been that native Texas elk were essentially restricted to the Guadalupe Mountains. The historical record tells a much bigger story.
Bones Don’t Tell Hunting Stories
Historical accounts can be challenged. Maybe an explorer mistranslated a word. Maybe someone saw a large deer and called it something else. Maybe an animal mentioned in an old journal wasn’t what a modern reader thinks it was.
That’s why the archaeological evidence is so important.
Gill and his colleagues documented elk bones, antlers, teeth and paleofeces from Texas archaeological and paleontological contexts. Their research includes evidence extending back into the Pleistocene.
Consider Baylor County in North Texas. An elk tibia recovered near Seymour produced a radiocarbon age with calibrated ranges including A.D. 1461-1668 and 1782-1797. In other words, there was physical evidence of elk in North Texas overlapping the era in which Europeans were beginning to document the state’s wildlife.
Another elk bone, a proximal phalange, was recovered from the Spider Knoll archaeological site in Delta County in Northeast Texas. The archaeological context was dated to roughly A.D. 970-1430.
Those locations are a long way from the Guadalupe Mountains.
The researchers also examined antler evidence and prehistoric rock art potentially depicting elk. Not every individual piece of evidence carries equal weight — some rock art interpretations, for example, necessarily involve interpretation — but taken together with the historical and archaeological record, an unmistakable picture emerges.
Elk weren’t simply animals somebody hauled into Texas on a trailer during the modern ranching era.
They were here.
What About Merriam’s Elk?
There is another wrinkle in the Texas elk story. Historically, some authorities proposed that the elk of the Southwest represented a separate form known as Merriam’s elk. That idea helped create another possible argument: Even if elk once lived in Texas, perhaps those animals were fundamentally different from the elk roaming parts of the state today.
Gill and his co-authors examined that question as well. Their study presented morphological, statistical and DNA evidence challenging the idea that the historic Texas animals represented a separate species or subspecies. They concluded that the native elk and today’s free-ranging animals belong to the same subspecies, Cervus canadensis canadensis.
Then comes perhaps the most fascinating piece of the modern story. DNA research cited by the authors indicates free-ranging elk in the Davis and Glass mountains are genetically indistinguishable from elk in New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest. The researchers concluded that elk naturally moved south through the mountain ranges connecting New Mexico and Texas and recolonized portions of their former Trans-Pecos range.
That is something very different from an exotic animal escaping from a high-fence ranch. It is recolonization.
In my earlier story on Texas elk, I quoted the researchers’ conclusion that the evidence substantiated native elk in Texas before their extirpation and described today’s Davis and Glass Mountains animals as resulting from natural immigration out of New Mexico.
That brings us to 1997 and one of the strangest chapters in Texas wildlife history.
What Happened in 1997?
Before Sept. 1, 1997, elk did not have the same legal status throughout Texas. State law specifically regulated elk as game animals in 15 counties: Brewster, Culberson, Dallam, Deaf Smith, El Paso, Hartley, Hudspeth, Jeff Davis, Moore, Oldham, Pecos, Potter, Presidio, Reeves and Terrell.
Then came House Bill 1489 during the 75th Texas Legislature.
The legislation systematically removed elk from those provisions of the Parks and Wildlife Code. It removed references to elk from hunting-license requirements in those counties, game-breeder provisions and sections dealing with TPW Commission proclamations and permits governing the taking of elk in portions of West Texas. Most importantly, it explicitly added elk to provisions defining exotic animals.
The House subsequently passed HB 1489 by a non-record vote. The Senate approved it 31-0.
But the official legislative analysis contains something extraordinary when viewed through the lens of what we know today.
Supporters of HB 1489 did not argue that elk had never been native to Texas. The House Research Organization analysis acknowledged that elk were indigenous to Texas at some point in history.
The argument was instead that Texas probably had no endemic elk for thousands of years and that significant natural recolonization from neighboring states was unlikely. Existing elk, supporters maintained, were present because private landowners had imported and bred them. Supporters also argued that game-animal classification interfered with private-property management and landowners’ ability to benefit economically from animals they had acquired.
But the analysis also preserved an opposing argument.
Opponents argued that elk were indigenous to Texas and could reestablish themselves if suitable habitat existed. They specifically pointed to the possibility of elk migrating naturally into Texas from neighboring states and argued that elk should remain a publicly managed wildlife resource rather than be treated as exotic animals.
That argument looks particularly interesting today because subsequent genetic research concluded that free-ranging elk in the Davis and Glass mountains resulted from natural immigration from New Mexico into former Texas range.
In other words, one of the possibilities raised during the 1997 debate appears to have happened.
Native or Exotic?
There are legitimate debates to be had about elk management in Texas: How should free-ranging populations be managed? What role should private landowners play? How should naturally occurring elk be distinguished from animals brought onto high-fence ranches? What effects could expanding populations have on agriculture, habitat and other wildlife?
Those are management questions. Whether elk historically occurred naturally in Texas is a different question, and the evidence for that is overwhelming.
There are eyewitness accounts extending back to the early 1600s and archaeological elk remains from locations far removed from the Guadalupe Mountains. There is evidence spanning widely separated regions of the state, modern genetic research supporting natural recolonization of former range and TPWD’s own acknowledgment that historical evidence indicates elk may once have occurred over much of Texas.
Even the official 1997 analysis of the legislation that helped turn elk into a legal exotic acknowledged their indigenous history.
The legal classification changed.
The natural history did not.
The Mystery That Remains
I started digging into this because I kept encountering the claim that elk aren’t native to Texas. They are, and the historical and physical record makes a powerful case for saying so.
The more interesting question now is why a native animal that Texas once managed as game in portions of its historic range was removed from that system in 1997. HB 1489 tells us what happened, and the legislative record tells us some of the arguments made at the time. It does not necessarily answer every question about why the change happened or why Texas has maintained that classification as our understanding of the state’s elk history has grown.
Maybe some of those answers are still buried in old files, memories and conversations from nearly 30 years ago. For now, that part of the story can remain an open question.
But the identity of the animal itself should not.
Long before Texas had high fences, exotic-game ranches or even a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, elk left their bones in Texas soil. Spanish explorers encountered them. Native people knew them. They ranged across a landscape far larger than the mountains along our western border.
They disappeared, and eventually, some came home.
Texas law may call the elk an exotic.
Texas history calls it a native
Chester Moore
Follow Chester Moore and Higher Calling Wildlife® on the following social media platforms
@gulfgreatwhitesharksociety on Instagram
To support the efforts of Higher Calling Wildlife® click here.
Subscribe to the Dark Outdoors podcast on all major podcasting platforms.
Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook
Email Chester at chester@chestermoore.com.