Summer elk deaths stoke CWD worries at onset of ‘important’ winter for western Wyoming herds

After the snow burned off at the tail end of last winter, some 480 elk wandered away from the Dell Creek Feedground.

The tawny ungulates left tight quarters at the 35-acre feeding site north of Bondurant, migrating toward their summer ranges high in the Gros Ventre Range and beyond. Most of the elk went off to points unknown, and their individual fates, likewise, remain unknown.

But 14 of the adult female elk departed with tracking collars. And three of them — over 20% of the tracked animals — died in the high country in the months that followed. Cow elk, which can live over 20 years, rarely keel over in the summer, a season when adult elk are least likely to die.

Wyoming biologists were unable to reach the cow elk carcasses before nature and decomposition ran its course. A critical dat