What kind of signs were you seeing and how did you differentiate from moose and deer?

It would be good if the elk are spreading that far but given how rarely they are sighted south east of the park in the Bancroft area where they were reintroduced, it would be a bit of a surprise if a herd has made it to the far north west corner of the park.

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West end. Small, unnamed lake between Kawawaymog and North Tea. I've never seen so much poop concentrated in a such small area before!

Droppings were clearly a larger ungulate, so the question was moose vs elk vs deer, was hard to distinguish. Droppings were dark in colour, looked too big for deer, and too small for moose so that had us curious.

We looked for a good set of tracks and found what certainly appeared to be elk tracks in the ice. I say fairly certain, because I'm not a wildlife bio, but it matched up with my key. Hindsight, I should have snapped some pictures for further verification, but it never occurred to me at the time. More of a "that's a cool wild moment".

Keep an eye out if in the area. Would be curious to know if a herd is for sure moving about up there.

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Were there enough tracks to suggest a larger group?

Given that moose tend to be solitary or mother's with a calf or two, then a large group would point away from moose. Then the larger droppings would suggest elk instead of deer.

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On a semi-related note, I had heard last year that the some of the road kill deer in the Bancroft Area were going to a trapper who I am told was trapping and dispatching wolves that were molesting the elk herd in that area.

I'm going to see if I can cross paths with the people who had told me this and find out if they know where this was occurring and if the elk are still known to be in that area or if they've moved on.

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I've done some asking around and I've been told that there's no reason why there wouldn't be elk where @Stajanleafs reported seeing the droppings. Basically what I've been told is that the elk are mostly hanging out in a herd which is east of Bancroft. The rest are scattering and there has been reports of elk as far west as Dorset and as far south as Peterborough county (it wasn't clear where in Peterborough county though). There was a sighting of several elk in Whitney last year sometime as well. This is all just word of mouth, so take it for whatever it's worth.

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