As a crowd of onlookers gathered on a bike path along a nine-hole golf course in Estes Park on a brisk morning in late September, Rodney Ford peered through a magnifying scope attached to a tripod. He was focused on a magnificent bull elk that was sitting in the shade of pine trees on the ninth hole beside the Big Thompson River, surrounded by three dozen females that the herd bull was anxious to impregnate. Ford and his wife had driven from Shreveport, La., spending the night in a van parked nearby, to witness the annual drama of elk rutting season in one of Colorado’s favorite mountain towns. “I drove 16 hours just for this right here,” drawled Ford, who was situated about 100 yards from the herd.