Dead Elk

I have a one-track mind these days. I have lots of other posts I still need to get caught up on, but all I can think about lately is Garden Valley. If I could stay up there full-time right now, I would do it in a heartbeat. I love just hanging out on the land and making small improvements, spending time focusing on my family, and dreaming of a one-day cabin.

I have had some people ask what we do when we go up to Garden Valley, so I decided to document some of the things we have been working on and doing! I am going to break this up into a several different posts so I don't end up with one giant post. This one, in particular, you may want to skip if you have a weak stomach. It was the one "not fun" disgusting project that we have had.

This is pretty gross... but I guess this is part of what comes with being a land owner, right!? After we put an offer on the land, we had a couple weeks for "due diligence". During that time, we walked all over the property. When we went down by the creek, we caught a whiff of what was most definitely a dead animal. After further inspection, Matt found that a dead elk that had gotten caught up in some trees that had fallen across the creek (darn beavers!). It was covered by a ton of other sticks that had also gotten washed down the creek, so it wasn't easy to see, but Matt could see the hooves sticking up. We knew this would be a big project, so we asked the land owner to remove and dispose of the elk before we closed. To make a long story short, they didn't remove the elk (or even come down in price on the land), but we bought the land anyway, so it was now our responsibility to remove.

Our kids were only allowed to play upstream until we could figure out what to do. Mandi and I started by fishing out bones (along with some skin and fur) from the bottom of the creek (what a nice sister!). We had a couple big black garbage bags full. I was surprised to see a mostly intact elk once we were able to remove all the sticks and debris to uncover it - I'm wondering if the bones Mandi and I cleared out were actually from a different elk? Anyway, the elk smelled before we uncovered it, but once it was fully uncovered, it STUNK. That is an understatement. I can't even explain how much it REEKED. We had to get it off our land quickly.

We had to figure out a plan of action for what to do next.  We started by getting a rope around the elk and tried to pull it out of the creek, but it was too heavy. Thank goodness we had splurged when we purchased the land and also bought a Razor! We took the Razor down by the creek and, with a lot of effort, were able to pull the carcass onto a tarp, get the elk wrapped up, and then dragged the elk all the way up to the road. We put the elk/tarp on top of a piece of subfloor so the tarp wouldn't rip, and we dragged the elk to some public land, where we dumped it off a cliff. Now that it was out of the water and in the sun, it would probably be decayed/eaten pretty quickly.

Once the elk was gone, I felt like we could finally start enjoying the land and do "fun" projects... stay tuned for posts about those. They will be much more enjoyable to read :-)