Fourth-grade classmates compete in the 20th annual World Elk Calling Championships in Reno, NV hosted by The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation of Missoula

Maddie Smith took a deep breath, the better to get in touch with her inner elk. Nine and nervous, she turned her back on the denim-and-camouflage-clad audience below her. Slowly she bent over, put a piece of soft corrugated plastic pipe to her lips, and began to recreate the soprano bugle of a bull elk.

As she straightened up, the note rose with her. To an untrained ear, the piercing sound might have been made by an unoiled hinge or a frustrated toddler. But heads belonging to trained ears in the audience nodded ever so slightly. Not bad, the nods seemed to say. Not bad at all.

Thus began the 20th annual World Elk Calling Championship last weekend. Elk calling — a skill that hunters perfected long ago to lure game with the promise of a little romance — is now its own sport. It is judged like figure skating, separated into age- or sex-based groups like tennis, has regional competitions like basketball, commands prizes up to $2,500 and offers a chance at a professional career.

But for Maddie, Juna Priest, Tatum Higginbotham, Carmen Hutchens, Jeremy Novak and 17 more of their fourth-grade classmates at the Jessie Beck Elementary School here in Reno — the elk-calling business offers the chance to mew, squeal, grunt, and plain old scream and consider it part of a good, if unusual, environmental education.

By FELICITY BARRINGER

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation http://www.rmef.org/

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27elk.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1204153405-WuPd9iO7lXDlJMXQvuloeQ