The Missouri Department of Conservation is in the process of conducting a feasibility study to see if elk would be suitable to Missouri. If so, initially 200 elk will be stocked in 10 different counties after September. Drivers and farmers beware.

I am not a game hunter, but I killed a deer a few weeks ago when I was on the way home from a basketball game. I had just had the car cleaned and was feeling quite satisfied as I drove along Highway 41 near Lamine. I was between the bridge and the railroad tracks where the Natural Resources Conservation Services had bought land on both sides of the highway and let it grow up in weeds.

Now this is supposed to be wetlands, but when our family farmed that same land for 30 years we never considered it wetlands. Anyway, it is now called wetlands and has grown up in weeds. I have driven this highway for a long time, and I have never seen deer in this stretch of road until that night. I missed the first one but could not miss the second one.

I didn't know whether to cry or get mad. I felt like crying--not because I had killed a deer (not all deer are Bambi) but because the front end of my car was ruined. Now before anyone gets upset about my reaction, let me explain.

We have deer roaming our woods and fields, eating our crops, jumping our fences and eating hay bales in numbers that resemble a herd. We saw 11 deer between the highway and our house one night last week, which is about three miles. This is not uncommon, and we are always dodging deer. Tom, my husband, has hit at least three in the last few years, so I do not hold these creatures in awe. It is costly to fix up a car even when you have good insurance because there is the deductible to pay every time this happens. Several of us have an idea where this deductible should come from, but I have another ax to grind at this time.

What if it had been an elk? Yes, an elk. The damage would have been much worse, or I could have been killed. Mature elk can easily reach 700 pounds whereas a deer weighs only 250 pounds. Imagine something like that coming up your hood and possibly through your windshield. In 1999 alone, deer were directly responsible for six deaths on Missouri's roads. There is no way we can calculate the number of accidents they have caused when drivers try to dodge them. A Missouri highway patrolman told me that he hears of it often.

The Missouri Department of Conservation is doing a feasibility study in a joint effort between state and private interests. They spoke to the Missouri Cattlemen, and not one member voted in favor of releasing elk in our state.

The elk release sites would be in 10 counties along the I-44 corridor in eastern and southeastern Missouri. Only 268 of the 9,000 people surveyed were from this 10-county area designated for the potential release. Strong support was registered in nonrelease areas, while there was virtually no support from the release areas.

Now, this study, as all government studies, is not cheap. This one will cost $90,000 to $100,000. The Missouri Department of Conservation will absorb approximately $40,000 to $50,000 of the cost while the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation will fund $50,000. The study results will be completed by September 2000, with release potential following that date.

Elk will likely be stocked at the rate of one per square mile. Two hundred elk, the expected initial population, would require 128,000 acres. This is just the "initial" number. That number will increase as they reproduce.

These elk will not stay in their "corridor." They are grazers that prefer the same habitat as cattle. They will damage fences, hay storage areas and private property. Our Missouri Department of Transportation does not mow some of the rights of way along the highways, including parts of interstate highways, so the elk will be a road hazard and a problem for traffic safety. Think of how many times you have seen a dead deer along the road and thought about what happened to the person or vehicle that hit it. It will be much worse if it is an elk.

Some people are so concerned about what our healthy cattle do to the streams when they get a drink of water. What do they think the elk will do to the creeks, streams, rivers and watershed areas?

Elk are carriers of brucellosis, tuberculosis, anaplasmosis, blue tongue and chronic wasting disease. All of these can be transmitted to cattle. It would take the seed-stock producers out of the marketplace and cause irreparable harm to Missouri's commercial beef industry.

Our state is a lot more populated than some of the Western states where the elk have more room to roam. If Missourians want to see an elk, they can go to the zoo. Most of the private damage associated with free-ranging deer occurs in the rural areas.

Missouri Cattlemen and Cattlewomen already take the lead in supporting Missouri's 850,000 to 1 million head of deer (private landowners own more than 90 percent of the state's surface area) and other wildlife concerns with no compensation from the Department of Conservation, despite their collection of $84 million for hunting permits and fees.

If that money is burning a hole in their pocket, they could help me pay my deductible. A lot of people would like to see pheasants, prairie chickens, or even more rabbits and squirrels in the state. Quail is almost extinct in our area. A group of experienced hunters think it is the red-tailed hawk that preys on them by observing the quail's habits and then eating them along with the turkeys that get eggs out of the quails' nests.

A bird, a rabbit or a squirrel does not take as much room as an elk to survive, and they would do a lot less damage if they collide with a car on the highway.

If you have a concern similar to mine, send a response to ombudsman Ken Drenon, Missouri Department of Conservation, P.O. Box 180, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0180. Call him at (573) 751-4115, ext. 848, or e-mail him at drenok@mail.conservation.state.mo.us. Or you can send it to the Missouri Cattlewomen, Dianne Sites, 7665 Arrow Rock Road, Blackwater, MO 65322, and I will see that it gets into the proper hands.