Man vs. elk
A mature elk weighs more than 700 pounds. Imagine that stomping around in your bunkers every day.
Drew Annan, CGCS at Forest Highlands Golf Club, Flagstaff, Ariz., doesn’t have to imagine it. He’s seen it just about every day since he started at the club 30 years ago.
“I saw 28 of them this morning,” Annan groans. “Elk are the real problem here. They stand in the bunkers and they feed on the capes so they don’t have to bend over as far to eat. It’s the damnedest thing.”
One man’s bunker, apparently, is an elk’s buffet.
The elk at Forest Highlands have done a number on the bunkers over the years. No bunker liners were installed when the course opened in 1988. The heavy hooves of the animals churn up the clay into the sand, resulting in severe contamination. Annan tried his best to combat the situation.
“We took the bunkers that had been impacted the most and we tried a soil stabilizer and we tried a textile liner,” Annan says. “Over time, the textile liners failed miserably. They start to float to the surface… sand would filter through them. We couldn’t consider them a long-term solution.”
Tom Weiskopf, who built the course with Jay Morrish, told Annan about the positive experience he had with Capillary Concrete at Torrey Pines.
“I heard that Capillary Concrete did well from a frost/heave standpoint,” Annan says. “I went with them, based on the recommendation from the mountain guys in the area and from Weiskopf.”
Last fall, 41 bunkers got the Capillary Concrete treatment at the course. Annan says the installation process was smooth. Ted Fist, head of U.S. business operations for Capillary Concrete, was on site to monitor and train the crew on the first couple bunkers before cutting them loose. A local concrete company maintained the necessary specs of the material, and with the “terrific work” of DHR Construction, they were off to work.
“You measure it, throw it in the back of a Workman, drive it out and shovel it into place,” Annan says. “You roll it with a paint roller to put the finish on top. By the next morning you can walk all over it.”
Though there has been no play on the bunkers since installation (the course has been closed for the winter), Annan loves what he sees so far.
“We’ve moved some sand around in the bottom of the bunkers to inspect the Capillary Concrete,” Annan says. “We’ve had a pretty good amount of freezing and thawing this year. And I’ll tell you, it’s damn near perfect. I could not find anything like little rocks that chipped off. It looks great. And I can take a 1-inch hose at 60 psi, and I can’t move water on these bunkers — it sucks it right on in.”
That’s a good thing, too, because the elk aren’t going to give him a break any time soon.
“We run them off when we see them, we yell at them, we throw a golf ball at them,” Annan says of the beasts. “But there’s nothing you can do about them at night. You can tell they’ve been lying in there all night. But the members love seeing them around, so we don’t do anything to discourage having them around. They’re a nuisance animal with a mesmeric value.”
Photos: Drew Annan