I think a lot of the preference for elk in my area comes from their relative rarity. My family has been successfully killing elk in Colorado since the 70’s and Oklahoma since the 90’s. We go to CO every year and have a ranch in the best area of OK for elk hunting. For most guys around this relatively poor area an elk hunt is a bucket list type hunt. Therefore elk steaks hold some kind of special place in most folks around here’s minds. I started a new job a couple weeks ago and it took exactly 2 days for everyone in the plant to know I’d killed a bull this year. I’ve probably had 7-8 people tell me how much better elk are than our local deer as they were trying to buy or bum steaks from me.
I’m pretty particular about meat care, deer, elk, even wild pigs when I decide to butcher one. To me unless you get a bad one, really rutty buck or a couple mule deer I’ve had from CO that were big old bucks and just really strong flavored, I don’t really taste a huge difference. I have a bull from CO and a middling sized 10 point whitetail buck from OK in my freezer right now. To me they are both excellent eating with no huge difference between them.
