I found this article interesting: https://thebamabuzz.com/can-we-bring-wild-elk-back-to-alabama/

I would love to see it attempted, but I imagine that many farmers would object. I would also love to hear why they picked the introduction sites that they did back in 1916. I would have thought they would target North Alabama and the mountains instead of Tuscaloosa, Sumter, and Pickens counties.

Yes, please.

Not enough open land available, even if it were attempted. The areas they roam is big country.

I-65 and Elk will not mix well.

yep

I hunt them in Timber in NM. They come down out of the big mountains when the big snows drive them to the valleys. They used to be here. They have them in TN , around LBL and Smoky Mts. I've been told they'd do well in the top right corner of Alabama. Farmers would hate em though.

LOL, introducing elk there would not add any hunting to the menu. The land is so divided with leases and the elk have such a large range it wouldn't make sense. They are also very destructive, especially for farmers and withing city limits. To top it off, poachers would kill anything with horns I bet. The only perk would be the state making money from a draw system with minimal chances of filling a tag.

I think there’s other factors involved

Why do we have an Elk River and no Elk? They must have been here at some point.

They absolutely were here, but unfortunately our modern landscape wont handle them anymore except in a few places.

VERY BAD IDEA.

They would wreck the heck out of a garden though

A 750# bull elk would make a mess of a Kia...

No way I could pull one up on the back rack of my 350 Rancher!!

I'd love to see some 350# bubba kill one and realize he's gotta quarter it and hump the thing out of the woods on his back instead of tossing it on his 4wheeler and riding off to the processor.

I like the idea, but animals that large are going to have some impacts that might make more problems than benefits. Vehicles hitting them, like mentioned above definitely comes to mind. People still complain about bison being hunted to near extinction, but if they hadn’t been we wouldn’t have farms in the Midwest.

No. They would compete with deer for food, but would be illegal to shoot except for limited tags. Not something I want to deal with.
as mentioned they would be a problem for cars, and farmers.

Nope. Not enough room for them to roam without having major conflicts with humans. The largest blocks of unbroken landscape in AL pales in comparison to what they have in other states. NC has elk, tons of mountainous sparsely populated area, and even then the elk are nuisance animals to the farmers and landowners out there. They have had elk for a while and yet there’s still no season on them and the only ones that have been shot are by farmers with depredation permits. That’s exactly how I’d foresee things going in AL if they tried to reintroduce them. Even if you could put a huntable herd somewhere in the state, I don’t see how there would be more than a handful of tags a year and slim odds to ever draw one in your lifetime. The lottery entry would probably be opened to non-residents because why would the DCNR do anything to limit revenue? And you better believe the DCNR has already evaluated the feasibility of doing this due to the revenue elk lottery/tags would generate. It’s just not workable with what the state has in terms of land, infrastructure and property ownership.