Wilds Child: The Elk Country Visitor Center 

If you ask my two young children what sound an elk makes, they will look at you with a mischievous glint in their eyes, grin, and let out a low pitched grunt or two. It’s one of their favorite tricks; they already know that most children don’t know what sound an elk makes, and it delights them to throw a grunt into the mix between rooster crows and tiger growls. To be clear, their calls are far from perfect – too low, abrupt, and never quite managing to reach the high cry at the crescendo that characterizes an elk call – but certainly my boys know how to put forth their best elk bugle. 

Of course, you don’t need to hunt the elk to take home a majestic antler or two. If you take a walk in the forests of Elk Country in the early spring, you’re likely to find discarded antlers sans 700lb cervid. Elk shed them annually after mating season, and so you’ll also find them in near excess in our neck of the woods. They are so plentiful that “shed-hunting” is a common practice among our most enthusiastic outdoorsmen, and it is done not with a gun but with a keen eye and patient step. 

So my boys know elk. In fact, they know a lot about most Pennsylvania animals – the white tail deer (our state animal), the ruffed grouse (our state bird), and the hellbender (our state disconcertedly-large amphibian) – but they are always excited to learn more. So when we awoke one cool summer morning to fog and a light drizzle, I knew the perfect rainy day activity was a long car ride on winding roads to our nearest nature center – The Elk Country Visitor Center. 

Located in Benezette, PA, the Elk Country Visitor Center is a world-class education and wildlife-viewing center. If you go at the right time of year – fall and spring – and the right time of day — dawn or dusk – you are likely to be treated to grand views of elk harems – yup, they’re called harems! – including dozens of doe elk grazing in meadows along with their massive bull elk counterparts. On the drive up, it isn’t uncommon to stumble upon elk herds crossing your path on the road or standing in a residential neighborhood (the elk are notorious for being unwelcome guests in folks’ gardens). That’s because Elk Country is home to the largest free-roaming elk herd in the northeastern United States. 

But even at midday in the summer – when the elk are almost certainly bedded down in the shade, hidden from view – the Visitor Center is decidedly worth the trip. 

And inside did not disappoint. Both boys ran straight through the gift shop bursting with clothes, books, toys, and local treats to the Great Room where both shouted “whoa” in unison as they took in the display. 

Three fully grown, life-sized elk mounts stood about the room – two bull elk and a cow. A calf was curled up in tall grass at his mother’s feet. All were shaded by two display trees that towered over them, stretching to the top of the log vaulted ceilings. Near the elk were other animal mounts, which my kids dutifully named one after the other. “Fox, turkey, snake,” my preschooler listed, pointing to each as he named them. My toddler listened attentively and made the animal sounds after their names were called: bark, gobble gobble, hiss. My preschooler glanced up at the trees: “woodpecker!” he called excitedly.

My children’s only complaint about the entire experience – and their largest complaint at all museums and educational centers – is how tantalizingly close those seemingly-cuddly-and-adorable-but-actually-fragile animal mounts are to desperately interested little hands. 

I likely pulled my kids’ hands back from attempting to stroke an animal mount roughly a dozen times. Per animal. And I repeated, “We look with our eyes, not with our hands” dozens more. I explained that our hands have natural oils that can ruin the fur and that, if we touched them, the animals might not be around for other kids to enjoy. My kids were mostly unconvinced. Here were their favorite animals literally within reach and they definitely wanted to give even the largest bull elk a healthy snuggle. The parts of the exhibit that were safe to touch – including a large elk rack designed for demonstrating heft – helped take the edge off, but I knew they wanted nothing more than to pet all the animals they had been learning about since infancy.

And the lesson was timely too. The same week that my boys and I traveled to the Elk Visitor Center, a neighbor found a rattlesnake in her backyard.

Although my boys will grow up in a town where everything from their post office to their school has animal mounts, and although my sons will grow up with a backyard teaming with wildlife, the lessons we gleaned from the Elk Country Visitor Center were important: we are not owners of the wildlife around us, not zookeepers or pet owners, but rather stewards of the animals, tasked with preserving their habitat and cohabitating alongside them in the wild spaces we call home.