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Bio-Diversity

Yellowstone Elk Migration Trail: Amazing Camera Trap Highlights

Elk, mule deer, coyotes, wolves, grizzly bear, and a porcupine all use the same trail high in the mountains of western Wyoming in this video by the Wyoming Migration Initiative

Chris Gill

• 2 min read
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Yellowstone Elk Migration Trail: Amazing Camera Trap Highlights
Like rivers, Yellowstone’s migration corridors have many tributaries. One of these passes through Pitchstone Waters Ranch. We see herds of as many as 100 elk exiting the national forest, passing through our meadows and across the Fall River, and then reentering national forest to the north. They are headed to their lower winter ranges to the west.

Next spring they will come the other way.

As a fundamental practice on our ranch, we work with national and state agencies to preserve and enhance these wild animal migration corridors by removing obstacles such as fences and choking undergrowth which obstruct passageways, and by improving our habitat to make it more hospitable to wildlife.

NOTE: this video was originally published to MigrationInitiative.org. And published to this site on December 30, 2019

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You can read more about Elk Migrations here ->

Yellowstone Elk Migration Trail Is A Wildlife Highway: Amazing Trail Cam Video

Elk, mule deer, coyotes, wolves, grizzly bear, and a porcupine all use the same trail high in the mountains of western Wyoming in this video by the Wyoming Migration Initiative. This video captured with trail cameras shows one of the 12 major Yellowstone elk migration corridors in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Elk migration happens during the same time as elk season, but many times there are hunting closures during the peak of the migration, depending on what area you are hunting.

These are the elk trails that big bulls navigate each fall. Some bull elk migrate with their large harems, but many migrate later in bachelor groups. If you’ve ever seen a large elk skull or mounted antlers from Wyoming, these are the sorts of migration trails those elk are using.

Trail cam video by Travis Zaffarano and Gregory Nickerson, University of Wyoming/WY Migration Initiative migrationinitiative.org, in collaboration with Wyoming Game and Fish Department

Funded by:

  • Wyoming Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation

Special thanks to:

  • Greg Anderson, Wyoming Game and Fish Department
  • Sara Domek, National Bighorn Sheep Center
  • Nick Dobric, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
  • Matthew Kauffman, Plum Schultz, Kimmie Takaki, Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
  • Elizabeth Travers and Andrew Parsekian, University of Wyoming
  • Justin Hawkins and Anita Harper, Shoshone National Forest

Filmed under permit # WAP564 from Shoshone National Forest.

Learn more at:

See also: Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates, 2018, Oregon State University Press.

NOTE: this post was originally published to this site December 30, 2019, and then reposted on November 3, 2022.