When my uncle was still working for th wildlife department they had a check station for elk. Successful hunters were required to bring their elk in, quartered or whole, to be weighed and recorded. I don’t think they ever weighed a gutted bull that broke the #500 mark. Our elk here in OK are a little smaller than the ones we kill in CO but not a whole lot.
I always laugh when I hear about guys shooting “ 1000 pound” bull elk, always flatlanders of course. Or the guy I work with whose dad shot a middling sized 5by a couple years ago that weighed 1400, got 930 pounds of boned meat back from the locker. In the picture it sure looked like a regular old 450 pound dressed bull to me. Of course I’ve skinned, quartered, and butchered a couple dozen of them and not just one so what would I know.
