Unconventional Opportunity.....

The High Country!

The three most beautiful States in the Country are your state, my state, and Colorado.  Colorful Colorado, the Centennial State really has it all!

But, without doubt; the best reason to go to Colorado is bugling.  Bugling?  Yes, bugling!  Haven't heard, huh.  Well, I found out about bugling one summer during a Rocky Mountain CUES Council meeting. (I use to be a member of the Bubba Council of CUES in North Carolina.)  At a dinner with some CU heavy hitters, I good-naturedly asked one CEO what Colorado people did for entertainment.  With great earnestness, he said he liked best to listen to elks bugle.  

Brownies or fruitcakes?

I started to ease away from him, figuring he had forgotten to take his medicine or had been munching on some of those "Denver brownies"; when his companion up and gushed that she, too, loved bugling!  I'll admit there was that momentary tinge of panic one feels, when outnumbered and surrounded in a strange place; but I held my ground.  "Oh, really," I managed.


Bugling!?  Well, it seems that in the Fall bull elks like to gather in Rocky Mountain National Park and bugle at the girls; and crowds of folks in Colorado flock to the Park to listen to that sonorous serenade. (Big city dwellers can get a sense of this experience by listening to the whistling around large, downtown construction sites at lunch hour -- different species, same idea.)  

Bugling, of course, marks the beginning of the rutting season for the elk.  The bulls seek to catch the eye of pretty little elkettes by stomping around, strutting their stuff, and bugling.  Southerners call this "talking trash"....




Each bull has a distinctive sound.  The bugle becomes deeper and more complex as a bull gets older. (Probably can't hold the note as long though.) The loudest, most aggressive buglers invariably run off rivals and win the hoof of fair buglettes.  Bugling is really a very civilized form of courtship which avoids the head-butting and ferocity of other horned species.  Humans use diamonds and red sports cars in a similar fashion.

Nice rack !

The National Park Service, of course, takes elk bugling very seriously.  The Service has implemented precautions to protect elks' "natural mating habits". I wasn't aware that elks were into unnatural mating habits, but one just never knows these days.  Rangers have even established an "Elk Bugle Corps" of volunteers "to work with the interpretive staff and to assist with training sessions and possible assignments". Interpretive staff? Training sessions? Possible assignments!?  I mean, there have been times, but...!

Actually, I can't imagine anything quite as entertaining as sitting in the Rocky Mountains listening to a ranger, in a Smokey Bear hat, give an interpretation of an elk in heat – can you?!

WAHOO WOCCU !!

Granted, I still have no earthly idea what an elk bugle sounds like. It was described as a cross between a whistle and a French horn (really narrows it down, doesn't it!); but the CEO and his sidekick steadfastly refused to do an imitation.  But, if you're looking for a chance to "get in the game" on bugling; noticed that the World Council of Credit Unions Convention is being held this year in Denver - always an informative, worthwhile convention and what a convenient opportunity for a little elks-cursion!!

So, in a rut?  Tired of the same old bull?  Do something unConventional!  Why not go bugle in the Rockies with WOCCU in 2015!
  
Denver is a musk in 2015.... Be there or elks!!!