North Dakota hunters will get a chance to harvest an elk in a new unit, according to Gary Williams with the U.S. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

J. Clark Salyer was previously Unit E5, which is unmanaged elk habitat and considered not great habitat for a herd. This had let hunters with tags for other units hunt there, granted they only harvest whatever animal their tag permits.

The large mammals now are to be added to the list of approved species for hunting at J. Clark Salyer.

“It will now be its own unit, with its own allocation of licenses,” said Casey Anderson, with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.

Only tag holders for the new unit will be allowed to hunt there.

That refuge and others in the area are mainly in place to protect waterfowl and migratory birds, Anderson said. Otherwise, he said, they offer unique opportunities to hunt deer, moose, and very soon, elk.

The herd in the Turtle Mountains has been spreading into the Upper Souris and J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuges, said Williams, who explained that his agency had been working to get federal approval to hunt the species on the refuges. The process, as he described it, had been cumbersome and involved agencies both in the state and in Washington, D.C. Local landowners also had an opportunity to give their input recently on the decision and process.

Elk populations are managed across six units in North Dakota, Anderson explained, and each is closely monitored, ensuring the population maintains a healthy balance. The threshold of what an area can handle is a combination of what the land itself can sustain, what landowners will tolerate as far as elk’s predation of crops and feed and what traffic can handle. This dictates in large part how many tags are available for each season, Anderson said.

Tag numbers are expected to stay relatively low, Anderson said, and specific numbers aren’t yet available but are expected in February or March. The low number of tags is due to the smaller herd in that area.

“For a big critter, they’re extremely hard to find in the woods,” Anderson said, explaining biologists from G&F fly over areas to count elk, but are limited in their ability to do so. These aerial counts, as well as information from landowners each winter, allow G&F to estimate how many elk are in an area, as counting each individual doesn’t work.

“If you count each animal, and you miss one, you’re wrong,” he said.

For anyone hunting the refuge, “it’s definitely going to be a unique hunt,” Williams said, partly because no vehicles are allowed to be used on refuges. He said the elk are primarily located in the more remote parts of the refuge, and it’s very possible hunters will find their prey miles from the nearest road. There, if the hunt is successful, they will have to quarter and deliver the elk to their vehicle at its parking place.