Call of the wild
Riding Mountain National Park draws tourists to Manitoba to hear bugling elks during rutting season
RIDING MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, MAN.— The haunting sound is a combination of moans, whistles and grunts and it travels from deep in the thick bush to where we are standing along a gravel road on a windy fall night.
“I can hear a bull right there,” declares Patrick Rousseau, a retired Parks Canada ranger and wildlife biologist who has called this place home for three decades.
Dustin Wilson, our young driver and member of Rolling River First Nation, puts a bugle made from an electrical conduit and gas funnel to his lips and lets out a similar though shorter and less complex call. His uncle taught him how to bugle for hunting and it’s harder than it looks.
The bull — as in bull elk — responds with increasing annoyance.
“He’s acting like a yearling,” Rousseau muses. “Hear him? He’s challenging you,” he tells Wilson. “He’s saying ‘What the hell are you doing in my territory, pipsqueak.’ ”
It’s late September in Riding Mountain National Park, the leaves are turning yellow and it’s the breeding season (a.k.a. the rut) for elk, so they’re extremely vocal for a precious month or so.
The males bugle, the females chirp and people come from near and far to try to hear this magical acoustical performance from late August to late September.
Most people wait quietly. A few mimic the bugles and chirps, even break a few branches to try to sound like a wandering elk, and hope that the majestic animal will come out of the forest.
We don’t stay more than a few minutes, though. “The reality is, I don’t like doing it much because it disturbs that animal,” Rousseau admits.
He has bundled us into a van with Shuttle Bug Tours and already taken us to the Lake Audy Bison Enclo- sure to see the park’s herd of 40 bison. This is one of just a handful of national parks that has bison and they’re grazing along a one-way gravel road in the south range.
We take photos from our van. It’s not like Yellowstone National Park where selfie-seekers get stupidly close to the dangerous wild animals.
We’re chuffed by our bison encounters and elk bugling. It softens the blow when we don’t see bear, moose or wolf.
“If you could guarantee wildlife viewing, you’d be the richest man in the world — or you’d be in Africa,” Rousseau jokes.
“The thing is,” he adds, “I have all this stupid knowledge and I’ve never written it down. I like to share it so people can act as ambassadors for national parks, the wildlife, the ecology, biodiversity and all that kind of stuff.”
It’s the tail end of Canada’s 150th birthday year and Parks Canada celebrated by offering free admission to turn more people on to the outdoors.
National park visits were up 12 per cent as of Aug. 31. Riding Mountain was up 20 per cent with more than 350,000 visitors.
The park informally known as Clear Lake is well-loved by Manitobans, but off the radar of other Canadians. Like Banff, it is one of our rare parks with a townsite within its boundaries — the town of Wasagaming, population 900.
Riding Mountain is also on Treaty 2 territory at the crossroads of Treaty 1 and Treaty 4 territory, Parks Canada cultural interpreter Desmond Mentuck tells us. He is from the nearby Waywayseecappo First Nation and says Wasagaming is an Anishinabe word that translates as “body of water, very clear.”
He tells us how moose are the keeper of 44 natural laws and the importance of bison to his people.
We discover that this park is home to Grey Owl’s first cabin. Archibald Belaney came to Canada from England and faked a First Nations heritage, but gained fame as a conservationist with a passion for beavers.
He lived briefly in a Riding Mountain cabin in 1931 before moving to a more famous one in Prince Albert National Park, where he wrote books and created films.
I don’t make it to Grey Owl’s Cabin — it’s 18 kilometres by foot or fat bike — but I do spend a night in a cabin.
It’s called a Micro-Cube and it’s one of Parks Canada’s newest “glamping” options.
The cube is a tiny, modern structure with a bed and electricity. There’s no heat, but the door locks — a bonus if you’re a woman alone in a park in late September.
I spend a peaceful but long night in the Micro-Cube listening to the sound of silence and emerge re-energized for a three-hour trail ride with Elkhorn Riding Adventures’ Molly Kelleher and her partner Adrian (Freddie) McKerchar.
Riding a horse in Riding Mountain seems essential, and with my trusty mount Elroy, who constantly lags behind and then trots to catch up, ride along the park’s boundary line and into the woods, meandering through a forest full of yellow leaves clinging stubbornly to the trees.
“Everything that you get out of a trail ride, that feeling of relaxation and connection, the horses need that, too,” Kelleher offers.
She sets Elkhorn apart by offering horse whispering experiences so small groups can learn to connect, one at a time, with several loose horses.
I take another ride, this time in a pontoon boat with Kelsey Connor, who owns Clear Lake Marina. You can DIY with a pontoon rental or take a sunset or dinner cruise on his bigger boat, the Martese.
The lake is too choppy for me when it comes time to kayak, so I catch a ride to the Riding Mountain Cabin to steal a few minutes with Manitoba multimedia artist Michelle Wilson, an artist in residence who is on her second stint here. Wilson wanted to study elk, but didn’t come at the right time in 2016, so switched her focus to bison and fell in love. She’s back to do more bison work, but timed it right and got to witness elk bugling.
The bison come up again at Camp Kippechewin (a group campsite for private events) where the Lakehouse boutique hotel caters a bison and pumpkin pie dinner and Parks Canada interpretation co-ordinator Patrick McDermott leads campfire songs like the “Elk Rut Rap” and “Mary-Ann My Hairy Bison Lover.”
When asked for his top-three Riding Mountain experiences, McDermott picks four — experiencing Clear Lake (check), visiting the bison enclosure (check), listening to elk bugling (check) and hiking the escarpment.
I join Ryan Murray, a Parks Canada heritage presenter and guide, at the Manitoba escarpment for the 5.3-kilometre Gorge Creek hike on my last day. The park offers regular guided hikes through the summer and this one starts at a viewpoint that shows how Riding Mountain got its name for being “an island of forest in a sea of prairies.”
“It’s a brilliant way to finish your trip,” says Murray, adding wistfully: “I think the perfect park would be filled with people falling in love with nature and learning to care about conservation.” Jennifer Bain was hosted by Travel Manitoba and Destination Canada, which did not review or approve this story.