Tennessee’s elk exist today because of a reintroduction, not a surviving wild herd. The species was extirpated from the state in the 1800s and returned starting in 2000, when animals were released onto the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area’s Royal Blue and Sundquist units in the northeastern Cumberland Mountains. That’s why this dataset’s record window opens right around 2000 instead of decades earlier.
October produces far more reports than any other month, matching the peak of the fall rut, when bulls bugle and gather harems and become much easier for people to notice. A smaller rise runs from April through June. Every record here comes through iNaturalist rather than GBIF, so the pattern reflects casual public sightings around the reintroduced herd, not a formal survey count.
Full species profile
