Out of curiousity, what is the average weight of elk, bulls and cows respectively?Living in Ohio, I've never had the opportunity to hunt elk (no matter how much I want too),but I work with a group of guys who have.One guy today told me he has seen cow elk killed that weighed 900 pounds and bulls that weighed 1500.I said he's full of it.If I'm wrong, somebody set me straight and I'll apologize to him tomorrow.I would believe those weights if we were talking moose, but elk?

Nad I'll add that although I haven't hunted them, I have seen elk in the wild, and that is what I'm basing my incredubility on.

IME, for RM elk, average cow will run 350-550, average bull run 500-750.

a really big cow will be 550-600, a really big bull will go 800-900.

Coastal Roosevelt are the biggest, The only one I weighed was a spike at 125lbs a quarter on the hook. Add the hide, head, guts probably 800-900 live. I've shot a few rag bulls that were ~30% bigger and have seen a few big bulls that were more like 50% bigger. My guess is Rockie MT are probably 20% smaller.

Not to say there might be a cow elk or bull somewhere in the many States and Canada where they live that might weigh that much .....

I've hunted elk in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, in many camps. I've never shot or seen either that'd weigh that, nor have I talked with any elk hunters who've ever seen any that large.

Just my experience.

I will say I'de surely love to see a 1,500 pound bull!

L.W.

Same IME...except when they are dead and a mile or more from the truck...by the time we ( notice I didn't just say "I"...)get them there, I'll sign any affidavit that the elk weighed the mythical 1000pounds! Easy....
Ingwe

Yep, and that is per quarter!!!

oh dude, you'd never guess how much I thought my first moose weighed by the time I got all of it back to the truck....

Moose weigh more than a ton..don't they???
Ingwe

Thats about what I thought.Thanks guys.

In my experience big mule deer does weigh at least 200 pounds and spike and cow elk weigh 900. All 6-point bulls weigh a ton and all moose (and Cape buffalo) weigh 2 tons.

I know this because of information obtained by first-time hunters, and the statistics have been backed up by magazine writers.

Who can argue with logic and 3rd party evidence like that!

Hemi

I've only seen one bull elk that probably weighed 1,000 pounds on the hoof. He was killed by my guide in Alberta and he was an absolutely huge old thing. Ugly horns, worn out, toothless and absolutely enormous. He actually outweighed Chub's 60-inch fully mature moose by at least 100 pounds. I'm trying to remember the weight, but it was something like 860 pounds; gutted, skinned, head & legs off.

It was amazing comparing the size of the elk and Chub's moose.

And it was so damned tough that you could not eat the gravy.

I guided for many years and have thrown around a lot of elk parts and pieces. Mostly, I'm thinking mature bulls run, as you say, 500 lbs to 750 lbs (for a damned big one) on the hoof.

And I've seen some bulls, spikes mostly, that were so small that a very strong man carried the gutted carcass. I've never done that, I never was that strong and/or stupid, but I've actually seen men carry a spike.

Elk, of course, are subject to sexual dimorphism and the cows run somewhat smaller. I've personally killed some pretty huge cows, just trying to knock off the herd leader, and they can be decent size. I've also seen quite a few little cows that only went 250 or so for the slick carcass.

I haven't killed many Roosevelt elk, but they look the same to me on the ground. Hell, it's just a dead flippin' elk But, the common knowledge is that they are larger than Rocky Mountain elk. Prolly so, I imagine.

Elk are all pretty good size and they eat a hell of a lot better than deer. And that's all I know.

Steve

Never weighed a whole animal but the last cow we cut up weighed 156 LB's of boned wrapped meat, minus the ribs. That included the paper and a few pounds of beef suet for the burger. We split her three ways was why she was weighed. Can't remember if we ever weighed one before. I would call her a average barren cow.

That's funny, can I use it?

Jack O'Connor's line was, "You couldn't even stick a fork in the gravy!"

Elk weigh too little on the hoof and too much on the ground (especially if you are packing them out on your back).

And they most always weigh more around the campfire....

What I always find amazing is those 1000 pound elk come out in 4 backpack loads...

Well, I never weighed one, thou I packet a few out over the years, they start out oh 450 or so lbs on the hoof and three tons by the time you get to the trail head and the truck.

The Bull Elk in this tread was weighed whole minus the guts and came out a 600# +/- 10#

http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/3280420/Barnes_TSX_s_SUCK#Post3280420

Ryan

We killed three cows in the last week and a half on the bow hunt (we can kill a spike or a cow). One 4 year old cow netted 158 lbs. of boneless meat. One two and a half year old netted 128 lbs. of boneless meat. My year and a half old cow netted 115 lbs. of boneless meat. We got a couple of big bulls in the last couple of years, a 330 bull and a 365 bull. They netted 225 lbs and 250 lbs. of boneless meat respectively (they get more fat with age, not necessarily more meat). I have killed a bunch of rag horn (2.5 year old bulls) and 3.5 year old bulls. They run a bit more than cows of the same age. I will get 150 off a rag horn and 175 lbs. off a 3.5-5.5 year old bull. A really accurate rule of thumb is, you get 1/3 of the live weight in boneless meat on elk and deer. We have tested this over and over again and have found it to be right on the money. I have seen some absolutely HUGE 420+ B.C. bulls and they still won't best 950 lbs. live weight. They do tend to weigh about 3 tons by the end of the day when packing them out though ;o) Don't even get me started on my last two moose. Even though they were in the 850 lb. range live weight, by the end of the day, I swear they were 1,500 lbs. Few meats are more dense than moose. In fact, I don't think their is a denser/heavier meat. Flinch

I don't know what my elk weighed live but I was able to haul her out whole and use a loader to skin her out since I shot her off of a hay circle SE of Westcliff on a RFW property. It was very hot that day so I took her to a local processor in Westcliff and he had scales, without head and hide she tipped them right at 500 lbs. Low hunting pressure and lots of quality feed will grow a very big animal even a cow.

Unfortunately the biggest elk I've seen were never weighed. Not much point in estimating weights from a bunch of little parts. But my cousin runs a custom meat cutting and sausage business. He had a whole bull carcass in last week that was just under 650 lbs. My hunting buddy killed one a few years before that was 620 lbs at the butcher. So a very few really big ones are out there!
This is the one I took last year. I have no idea what he weighed but he was big bodied, probably my biggest. It was kinda funny when our little front end loader couldn't take the weight and we just had to skid him onto a trailer to get him back to camp. It sure was nice to drop him in a hay field!

We leave leg bones in and everything else stays on the hill. We cut the tenderloins ourselves and we have been averaging about 200# of cut amd wrapped meat for the last few years per animal. Bear in mind these were all spikes as we have to let the big ones go.

What Lefty said........

Out of 40+ elk I've killed, I had one bull that would've broke 800 lbs. I've seen a few more killed while guiding that would've been in the 800+ lb range. In the late 60's, there was a bull killed near Lake City that the DOW guesstimated ate 900-1000 lbs. I also watched a bull during one winter in the Gunnsion Basin that I'm pretty sure would be pushing a 1000 lbs--and would have probably net scored ~400+ B & C points.

My dad killed a cow 30 years ago that was HUGE--probably over 600 lbs.

But most are what Lefty said--cows over 500 lbs are rare, and bulls over 700 lbs rarer still.

In the 1960's, Alaska transplanted some Roosevelt elk (which run about 10% heavier than RM's ) onto an island of off the coast. The island had not had grazing ungulates on it for thousands of years. With an initial excess of feed, many of the first generation of bulls born on the island grew to 1000+ lbs. Several of the bigger bulls were killed and weighed by Alaska, and one come in around 1500 lbs. But once the feed was grazed on for a generation, the later generations of Roosies return to "normal" weights.


Casey

In the 1960s or early 1970s the meat lab at the University of Wyoming weighed a large number of all kinds of game animals, hog dressed(whole with the lower legs, hide and head off), and found for elk that branch-antlered bulls averaged about 550 pounds, adult cows 450 pounds, spike bulls 350 pounds and calves 250 pounds. While the numbers weren't exactly 450, and so on, the differences weren't much. So, Utah Lefty is pretty much on the mark, based on measured hog-dressed weights and tossing in the weight of the skull, hide, lower legs, and innards. Anything bigger is probably being fed or frequenting something like an alfalfa field.

This one produced 187 pounds of boneless meat.

I know because I had the weigh the boxes to get it on the plane in Denver just last week.