My experience is that the situation dictates whether an elk jumps a fence or takes it out.
Used to work on a ranch that, at times, had over 1,000 head of elk on it. Fixed a lot of fence behind them.
What I saw was if elk were pressured, they would often run right through a fence. If not, they would jump it like it wasn't there. Cows, calves, bulls, didn't matter.
When elk take out a fence, we'd refer to it as an elk-kill. Because when they took one out, it was usually at least a couple hundred yards of fence destroyed and often the fence would be a quarter mile into the pasture.
