Hardware Ranch Elk Festival set for Oct. 13

HYRUM — Your family can participate in several outdoor activities at the Elk Festival at the Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area.

You might even see some wild elk.

The festival is free of charge. It will be held Saturday, Oct. 13. Activities run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

You can reach the ranch by traveling 18 miles east of Hyrum on SR-101.

"The festival is a family-oriented event," says Dan Christensen, superintendent of the Hardware Ranch WMA. "The activities are designed to immerse children of all ages in wildlife and its habitat."

Activities at the Oct. 13 festival include: horse-drawn wagon rides to see the elk; pumpkin painting; mountain man story telling; animal track stamping; pellet gun shooting at the Division of Wildlife Resource's shooting trailer; an elk bugling and cow elk calling contest at 1 p.m.; and exploring exhibits in the ranch's visitor center.

Kids can also receive a set of balloon antlers and match silhouettes of animals with the animal's name in a wildlife mural match!


If you hop on one of the free wagon rides, you might see some elk in the distance. "On Oct. 2, we spotted our first elk of the fall, a six-point bull with 20 cows," says Marni Lee, Hardware Ranch assistant manager.

This is the ninth year the ranch, which is operated by the Division of Wildlife Resources, has held a fall event to celebrate the return of elk to the bench above the WMA's visitor center.

For more information, call (435) 753-6206.

The elk festival is the kickoff for the fall and winter elk-viewing season at Hardware. The ranch's visitor center should open on Dec. 13. Its sleigh rides through the elk herd should also begin that day. Dec. 13 is also the day the WMA's staff should begin feeding the elk.

Once the ranch opens for the winter, its hours of operation are noon to 5 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. (The ranch's sleigh rides and all of its facilities are closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.)

If you'd like to ride through the elk herd on one of the horse-drawn sleighs, you must buy your ticket before 4:30 p.m.

Morning school programs for public school groups will also be available in the ranch's visitor center starting in mid-December. The programs are available by reservation only. To reserve a spot, call (435) 753-6206.

"The restaurant at the ranch will not be open this season, and we will not be offering moonlight rides and dinners, or private parties," Lee says. "You're welcome to bring picnic lunches and eat in our indoor dining room, though. Please remember that cooking is not allowed in the parking lots or the buildings."

Hardware Ranch attracts about 50,000 visitors each year. People visit the ranch to hunt, fish, view wildlife or just to enjoy the pristine Northern Utah facility.

The ranch is best known for the horse-drawn sleigh rides that take you among 400 to 600 head of wild elk feeding in the ranch's meadow.

The ranch is also one of the major trailheads on the Shoshone Trail. The trail draws several hundred off-highway vehicle and snowmobile enthusiasts to the WMA every year.

Cattle and Airplanes Team Up to Help Wildlife at Hardware Ranch

Hyrum -- Wildlife biologists are using an old-fashioned but innovative approach to restore habitat for mule deer and other wildlife at the Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area.

They’re teaming cattle with airplanes.

Dropping Seed

Two seasons of intensive grazing by cattle has removed much of the cheatgrass on the south facing slopes of Blacksmith Fork Canyon.
Conditions are now ideal to reseed the area with plants that will be perfect for the wildlife that use it in the winter.

The reseeding effort is part of a long-range Division of Wildlife Resources’ plan to restore critical big game winter habitats at the Hardware Ranch WMA, which is 15 miles east of Hyrum.

April 6 marked an important phase in the habitat restoration project.
Airplanes buzzed portions of Blacksmith Fork Canyon that day, dropping nearly $30,000 worth of seed on the ground.

The seed mixture the planes dropped is a special blend of forbs and shrubs. The plants are designed to give wildlife the nutrition and energy they need to survive harsh winters. These plants are also designed to help wildlife transition from their winter diet to spring and summer diets.

Challenging Terrain

As biologists contemplated the best way to restore habitat on the steep, rocky hillsides of Blacksmith Fork Canyon, they could see they were in for a challenge. Using tractors and other mechanical means was out of the question, so they came up with a creative approach: put livestock in the area to graze it, and then follow the grazing by reseeding the mountainside by airplane.

“One of the first things we wanted to accomplish with this project was to minimize the fire danger to the existing winter habitat,” says Ron Greer, regional habitat biologist for the DWR.

“Removing the cheatgrass, which is the main fuel [for fires], will protect the sagebrush, bitterbrush and other species [we’ll be planting here].”

The DWR contracted with Diamond J Resources of Rich County to carry out the work. Personnel with Diamond J Ranches have a solid background in range science and in conditioning cattle to graze steep slopes.

Preparing the Seed Bed

In addition to removing the threat of fire, the cattle that are grazing in the area during this third year of the program have created ideal “safe spots” for seed to germinate and take root.

“These safe spots have soil temperatures that give the seed better chances of growing,” Greer says.

“Ultimately, we want to be able to winter thousands of mule deer, like we used to on this slope.”

For more information, call the Hardware Ranch WMA at (435) 753-6206 or the DWR's Northern Region office at (801) 476-2740.

Warm Winter Forces Early Closure at Hardware Ranch

Feb. 12 closure one of the earliest on record

Hyrum -- The Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area hosted a near-record number of visitors in December.

Now, just six weeks, warm weather has forced the staff at the ranch to close its winter elk-viewing season early.

The winter elk-viewing season at the ranch east of Hyrum closed Feb. 12. That's more than a month earlier than normal.

"We've had a strange winter," says Dan Christensen, the WMA's superintendent. "Last week, after five days with afternoon temperatures near 50 degrees and bare ground, the elk on the meadow headed back to the high country."

Christensen says this is one of the earliest closings on record at Hardware Ranch, where the winter season usually runs until mid-March. During a typical three-month winter season, as many as 50,000 visitors come to the ranch to ride in horse-drawn sleighs among several hundred elk that are fed in a large meadow area.

"Like many of the ski areas and other winter operations in Utah, the really poor snow conditions, coupled with frigid temperatures, hurt us in January," Christensen says. "After that, we just never got most of the storms that dropped snow along the Wasatch Front."

The other problem at the ranch is thick, sticky mountain mud. The spring melt caused by higher than normal temperatures, coupled with a few days of rain, have made it impossible to pull wagons full of passengers through the meadow. When the ranch's staff did take passengers through the meadow recently, the weight of the wagons cut deep ruts in the ground and the mud bound clumps of hay to the wagons' wheels.

"People are asking if we'll reopen this season," Christensen says. "Without snow and subzero temperatures, there's really no reason for the elk to come back or stay here. And without the elk, there's not enough up here for people to see this time of the year."

Spring, Summer and Fall

When asked what will happen next at the ranch, Christensen rattled off a list of chores.

"We would rather be doing the rides, but with the ambitious schedule of education programs and habitat improvement initiatives at Hardware Ranch, we'll just change direction and start working on these other items a little sooner," he says.

"We have education programs scheduled through the end of February, and in March we start the first full season of an exciting new education partnership with the Bear River Bird Refuge in Brigham City."

Other chores on the list include getting ready to turn nearly 1,000 cattle onto Hardware Ranch in April as part of a range improvement study; completing a water development project funded by the Mule Deer Foundation; building nearly 10 miles of fence along the ranch's boundaries; hosting summer handcart treks; changing and adding displays in the ranch's visitor center, using money provided by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation; and completing a year-long maintenance program designed to bolster the ranch's aging facilities.

"We may be closed to the general public for a while, but we do a lot of things up here with various groups throughout the year," Christensen says.

For more information, call the Hardware Ranch WMA at (435) 753-6206 or visit the ranch's Web site at www.hardwareranch.com