It seemeth to me it is time for an update!
Saturday, Mom and Dad arrived for a visit. They stayed until today. Monday, we had planned to go to the Bison Range near here and watch the annual round-up - at least until we found out that it wasn't until next week. But we went anyways; just drove through. It's a hilly area of who-knows-how-many acres, all fenced into various humongous pastures. Very pretty, especially with the fall colors starting. We saw some buffalo right up by the road; then several different instances of deer. Then we stopped at a little rest-area right at the top and walked out on the path there and... dumdumdum... heard an elk bugle. This was very exciting, until Dad (who had gone on ahead) reported back. It was a guy standing just below the edge of the ridge out of sight. Bah.
BUT! Just around the corner, we saw REAL elk! Three nice bulls, feeding along casually and ignoring the deceitful guy around the hill. And just after that, we were inching down a hill and saw, below us on the next switchback, a bunch of cows - and with them, the biggest bull yet. It was fascinating to watch them. We shut the car off, rolled down the windows and tried not to breathe loudly. We were close enough that we could hear their hooves in the dry grass; could hear the bull talking to the cows - he made a noise rather like water bubbling; and we could hear him bugle, which he did. A lot. We also got to watch him chase a few strays back into the herd, and then start to shepherd the whole bunch along. I think he wanted them to come towards us, but they weren't having any of that (CARS! You've GOT TO BE KIDDING!) - so in the end, they went up over the ridge and into the trees. That alone was worth having missed the roundup. After that, we ended up seeing several more bulls; no more avec harem though.