Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Cow vs spike

On average which will weigh more? Thanks captdavid

Probably pretty close if the same age,but an older very mature cow will weigh more.

The last elk I took to a commercial processor weighed 330 on the hook, hide off. She was a biggun. However, the OP said average and she wasn't.

A big/older cow will weigh more than a spike...

A spike is only a spike for one season.
A cow can get to a pretty good size if it manages to live long enough.

Spikes can vary in size, because they're still growing pretty fast. Have seen some pretty big spikes late in fall or early in winter. But a really big cow can be pretty big!

I shot a bull that had two spikes running with it. If they weighed 300 lbs whole I would have been shocked , tiny little fellows. On the other hand my pop shot a cow once that weighed 400lbs skinned at the meat locker. Huge ole girl , that was a wee chewy!!!!

Weight-wise I don't know, but a mature cow and an antelope will fill my chest freezer.

Have only shot one spike and that was so long ago I couldn't tell you how it tasted, which is more important to me than weight. For taste, don't shoot the lead cow or the herd bull.

Most spikes are 1.5 years old. Therefore most herds will have a significant proportion of older therefore heavier cows.

Spikes are only about 18 months old come hunting season. They are not very big yet. Some are pretty small. One small spike I shot, had I not had help to pack, I might have contemplated trying to get in a single load since the meat was not filling my pack sack as much as normal (I was a lot younger then). Personal observation, having parted out, packed out and butchered several cows and spikes: for meat I would rather get a mature cow than settle for a spike. Mature cows are simply larger and yield more meat. They often taste better, too.

But to back that opinion up, here is a paper with real data
http://www.wyoextension.org/agpubs/pubs/B594R.pdf.

Or here is a table from that publication for comparison. Spike would be 1 1/2, average cow I would be comparing with was probably 4-6 years old. That small spike was a bigger than a calf, but certainly smaller than the average on the table, so maybe its yield of boneless meat would have been 120 pounds.



And if you look at this photo of a mature cow and a raghorn at approximately the same distance from the camera, you can see that even a raghorn (2 1/2 years it looks like) may be only the same size or a little smaller than a mature cow.

Unless they are the same age (1.5 y-o cow vs 1.5 y-o bull) a cow will weigh more, just like the chart above shows. A mature cow will often have bigger hind quarters than a younger rag horn bull. But in the same scenario a bull will have heavier fronts.

I would expect a young cow to taste better than a young bull (all other things being equal as to bang-flop, good handling of meat, etc). Anyone ever compare the two?

BH63

You wouldn't be able to tell blindfolded......

Ive shot a Calf, 4x4 raghorn and several cows. The 4x4 raghorn was the best eating. Most of the Cows were old dry cows so I am sure that has a lot to do with it.

I shot both of these elk out of the same herd, the spike was bigger. It all depends on the cow and the spike. What people don't understand is that elk are like people and not all cows get large and not all bulls get huge antlers...

Why would he have to be blindfolded?

You do cut the nuts off before you cook 'em up, dontcha?

^
Funny! (although I did get what the huntsman22 meant).

But come to think of it, I would guess it depended upon what part of the elks you were cooking.

BH63

Shrapnel, could that spike be long in the nose? As in a 2.5 year old?

In the 90s we killed two spikes nearly every year. We quartered them and had them processed. I can tell you that Thanksgiving killed AZ spikes weighed between 220 and 240 quartered. That was saving everything on the carcass except the lower legs. Nothing was boned off. I weighed a lot of them.

My son killed a big old cow a few years ago that the hanging carcass weight was a little over 400# and bigger than any bulls that he had in yet.

In the early 90s my buddy killed a bull in Eastern AZ that was weighed in the field by the biologist with a portable tripod. It was north of 950#. The second bull they had was only 550#. Both were 300" 6x6s.

Dennis,

All good points.

There can be a considerable size difference between Montana spikes killed in September, when both bow and back-country elk seasons open, and spikes killed late in the fall. September spikes are only about 1.25 years old, while late in the fall they're the "normal" 1.5 years old, and since they're growing fast when that age they can grow quite a bit in three months. And there are a few 2.5 year old elk with spike antlers.

Any comparison also depends on what's called a "cow." My biggest bodied Montana mule deer buck was as large as a 1.5-year-old cow elk my wife killed a couple weeks later. But have seen some cows as large as some 6-point bulls.