Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting How much meat yield from an elk?

Roosevelt elk are very big. I have seen some whopper cows here in Idaho also.

This is a better than average cow for my area. Bout 450lbs.

This was a roosevelt that I killed. It stood with 40 others and was one of the better cows. I'd be surprised if it yielded more than 15 lbs more than my rockys.

As to the reference to a lot of burger from a processor...
Processors add beef or pork to venison, antelope a elk when they make it into summer sausage and some also put some in with burger. Could have been part of the abundance of burger.
And it just might have been a frugal processor and a very large cow.

Yeah we don't have to worry about CWD so that's nice. There's good meat on the neck but it's a pain to get, when I bone them out in the field I only get the biggest chunks off it. The neck does indeed have some lymph glands and stuff, a very large tendon especially on bulls, we have to pick through it. Much easier to do on a table than in the field. The ribs are a pain and that's exactly right, by the time you cut through all the fat and connective tissue there's not much. The meat surrounding the ribcage has some good chunks but the ribs proper is a lot of trim for a little meat. But it all adds up, we are allowed 1 deer and 1 elk a year IF you get drawn, it's a lottery. We stretch it best we can.



Yep. When we have to pack them out there's definitely less, for a packed/boned out cow I would say 115lbs is fine. But the OP looks like the butcher got a pretty whole cow elk. I'd have gotten him more meat

That's a lot of meat

Is that pure burger, or fat-added burger?

Are these 450 pound cows weighed with the guts in them?

I'm sure not packing a scale and block and tackle around the mountains just to weigh a whole elk. The closest I get to weighing is when I load the pieces on my llamas. I need to weigh the panniers to keep them balanced. That will include bag and pannier weight and only the long bones if I leave them in.

OK, guys. Like RC I don't pack a scale, (even for weighing panniers). But on another forum a guy made a comment about getting 30 lbs of boned meat off a bull elk neck. I generally don't get too careful about getting every last scrap off a neck, but that sure seems way high in my experience. How much is there on one, really?

I had them add 2% beef fat.

Five to seven I'll bet. There's a big bone running through it, not to mention those monstrous yellow tendons.



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I don't take the bones, or throat.....I'm in the 5-7 camp.

I have a hand scale to balance my loads for the mules, (this scale is not calibrated) . But it just occurred to me last night are some people talking live weight, and others gutted weight with head and hide and hooves still on? Certainly a carcass will be a bigger percentage of the total mass of the later over the former.

It would be very rare to have anyone post a live weight (or freshly killed before gutting).

Another thing I would like to share is I took a venison neck and simmered it in broth and onions and spices for several hours, until the meat started falling of the bones. Let it cool, pulled the meat, and had enough for two gallons of stew. It was only a small whitetail neck. I could just imagine the amount of meat possible from an elk neck braised, and the the meat pulled in this fashion.

The two bull elk where I had the meat weighed, resulted in 225lbs and 250lbs of boned out meat. It felt closer to 1000lb on my back by the time the last load is hauled out.

We don't have a pot nearly big enough for a whole elk neck.

Got a saws all? Get that neck cut up 2 pot sized chunks, CWD be dammed! I figure as long as I do not die of cirrhosis .............I win!

I trim every bit off the neck I can and grind it for burger. No fat added.

Sky Lakes Wilderness, Oregon. 4x4 Roosevelt. Went from this:





To this:










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