Alaskan Dall Sheep from the Talkeetna Mountains with Alaska Experience

Pheasant Bobwhite Quail Grouse Hungarian Partridge Chukar

California Quail Snipe Woodcock Scaled Quail Prairie Chicken

Upland hunting is an American term for a form of bird hunting in which the hunter pursues upland birds including quail, pheasant, grouse, prairie chicken, chuckar, and others. Upland hunters generally employ the use of gun dogs to find and retrieve game.

Upland birds tend to be found on the ground in heavy cover. Dogs find the bird by scent and force them to fly. The hunter then attempts to shoot the birds on the wing. This is also known as wing shooting.

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ABOUT THE ELK
Elk (in North American English) are an Old World deer species that originated in Eurasia and spread to North America, crossing the Bering Land Bridge during the ice age. They are also known as wapiti, a Shawnee name meaning 'white rump'. The original meaning of Elk, and the meaning of the word in British English, is the European variant animal referred to in North America as the Moose Alces alces.

North American elk were once considered a species separate from the Eurasian red deer. Scientists now consider the North American elk and Eurasian red deer to be the same, though distinctions between the two live on in the language. The term wapiti applies to the North American elk and to the wapiti-like red deer subspecies in Eastern Asia where the males resemble the North American elk in their antler structure and mating calls. The American elk, along with Sichuan deer, Alashan wapiti, and Manchurian wapiti were once collectively classified as Cervus canadensis, and the remaining subspecies being classified as Cervus elaphus.

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Bactrian deer, although much smaller in size than the American elk and more red-deer like, are sometimes called wapiti due to the coloration of the male deer's coat and rump-patch, which may resemble that of a male elk. European red deer will interbreed with American elk, when penned together, and the offspring are fertile. Remnants of the elk population that moved easterly into North American from the Bering Land Bridge also moved westerly back into Asia, and there are existing populations in mountainous Central Asia that resemble, if not identical to, the North American elk. These Siberian elk, along with the American elk, are the only red deer subspecies where female deer and calves also carry neck manes. Also, unlike most red deer subspecies, female deer grow close to the male deer in size.

Elk weigh 230 to 450 kg (500 to 1,000 lb.) and stand 0.75-1.5 m (2.5-5 ft.) high at the shoulder. Their antlers usually measure 1 to 1.5 m across, tip to tip. Males weigh more than females, but the difference is less compared with other red deer subspecies where the males may weigh twice as much as females.

North American elk are the largest of the Red Deer. The American elk terminology is different from the European, as the males are called bulls, the females are called cows, rather than stags and hinds, respectively. The terminology of stag for males, hind for females, generally applies to all red deer subspecies of Europe, Asia (including the elk/wapiti populations that live in Central Asia) and North Africa. These terms could be applied to elk/wapiti populations in North America, but this is rarely the case. Likewise, the terms bulls and cows can be applied to the elk/wapiti populations that live in Central Asia. Elk/wapiti offspring are called calves and red deer offspring can be called either fawns or calves.

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The vocal apparatus and mating call of the elk is also different from that of the red deer, in that the elk "bugle" as opposed to "roaring". This is an adaptation to the more open (less thickly wooded) environment of the elk, allowing high-pitched sounds to travel further. Asian red deer and Asian wapiti-like red deer have mating calls that may resemble either European red deer, American elk, or both. Vocal apparatus and mating calls are unique to each red deer subspecies. The Central Asian highland red deer subspecies, such as the Kashmir stag, due to their mountainous habitat, may have mating calls that resemble both European red deer and American elk. The Manchurian wapiti is similar in ecology to European red deer in occupying dense forests. Its mating call is a "bugle" like the American elk, but distinctive in sound from the American elk due to their forested habitat. (Great book sources for wapiti and red deer are Elk Country and Deer of the World, both books written by Dr. Valerius Geist).

The current elk population of the United States is estimated to be about one-tenth of the historic level. The population along with most other North American game animals reached a low point around 1900. However populations have rebounded with controls on hunting. There were estimated to be 782,500 elk in North America in 1989. About 72,000 then lived in Canada. Some 20,000 are in ranches where they are raised for meat, antlers, or for hunting.

One of the most important uses of farmed or ranched elk is production of Velvet antler. Most elk live in the west, especially the Rocky Mountain region. As of 2005 approximately 7,500 elk live in the wild in the United States east of the Mississippi River and that population is spread over seven states. The population is similarly small in eastern Canada. However, both areas have in very recent years experienced a good population growth and even dispersal into wide areas that the elk were not originally transplanted to. It should be noted that of the aforementioned eastern U.S. population, 5,500 are found in the state of Kentucky, which has a tremendously successful restoration program and whose herd has been growing at the yearly rate of 15%.

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