Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Size of Elk?

I know very few bulls ever make it to a real scale, so we are all just guessing at most of this. I guess a guy should start making measurements and keeping book so that when he does get one to a scale, he has something to reference.

I have never seen a roosevelt elk so I can't comment on their size except to repeat what my buddy told me and it came up again this year.

I have seen only two truly big bodied elk and I wasn't able to kill either one. I felt that they were easy as heavy as the average quarter horse which is pushing 1100-1200#.

My son killed a cow last year that weighed just under 400 at the meat locker and that was without lower legs and half a neck. Pretty big for a cow.

Elmer Keith claimed in one of his books that really big bull elk taken from the area of the 1910 burn, when really great browse was growing up, would weigh 1400 pounds. How he knew this he didn't say, but I do know a guy in Idaho who claimed he killed a big bull in the 1980's that produced 800 pounds of boned meat.

My wife and I have weighed a lot of field-dressed animals before we butcher them (we have an 800-pound freight scale in the garage) and normally the boned meat ends up being about half the field-dressed weight or a little less. In that case my buddy's elk would have weighed 1500 pounds or so.

Now I am just reporting what some people have said. Have always wondered if my buddy's elk was in the quarters, not boned. I do know that the Roosevelt elk on Afognak Island in Alaska have been reported up to 1300 pounds or more.

JB

The big one I had on the wall, was shot in the company of an older fellow who had lived in the woods most of his life and had shot more moose and elk in his life than I ever will, probably by many a factor of multiple times.

He said, and I believe him, that this bull elk (after we'd sectioned it and packed it all out) was bigger than all but 2 bull moose he'd shot in his life. Admittedly, most (or all) of the moose he'd shot were in the Kootenays, and thus had more in common with Canadian/Shirus smaller bloodlines that they did with much bigger Canadian/Yukon/Alaskan bloodlines. He was also trained as a butcher and pronounced it a +1100 lb bull. Admittedly it was never weighed, but to my eyes looked every bit as big as my quarterhorse - who is 1100 lbs.

I too, have heard stories of weighed coastal Roosevelt's going over 1200 lbs, for what it's worth.

From here on out, I am taking measurements- starting this September!!!

in areas of high elk density, often the bulls that are just less then the biggest will be the heaviest come rifle season. the rut activities cause the biggest of the bulls to lose a ton of weight. the bulls that are spending their time looking for a cow are going to lose less weight than the bulls defending AND servicing a group of cows.

I have been told 2/5 live weight=boned meat. we typically see 175-200 lbs of boned meat in the cows we wrap. that should mean our cows would be in the 450-550 lb range. a few raghorns would go another 100lbs and the biggest bulls we have seen would go 850-1000lbs on the hoof.

all died with bullets of less than 180grs.

John,

The heart of the 1910 burn area is in the Clearwater and St.Joe. This is my neck of the woods. I also have live near Bozeman and chased elk over there.

Much of the elk in N. Idaho were transplanted here after the 1910 fire from the big herds in Wyoming. They are the same elk.

What I've noticed though is that elk I've came across in Montana typically grow larger in width racks, and the bodies are typically not as thick as our mature bulls sometimes can be.

Remember that these are the same elk in ancestry, but I think they may have changed mildly over time.

While we do not have that high 10,000' ft country so common with the central rockies, we tend to get more snow at lower elevations. Take for example Lookout Pass is only 4800 ft elevation. Yet the annual precip is '33 ft, much of that being snow. Simply put 4000 and '5000 ft here in N. Idaho is difficult to get around in come winter time. I tend to think that maybe these elk Elmer talks about in Idaho have somehow been able to accumulate more weight than those near rangeland areas as a survival mechanism. This would have been especially true of the post 1910 fire years when feed would have been in a peak following this 3.5 million acre fire.

I could be very wrong with this theory. And remember that's all it is, is theory. But take 4000 ft here in N. Idaho and then go to Bozeman and compare average snow depth. Compound the fact that there is no range land in the Clearwater and St.joe like grassy valleys and sage flats, and you'll see why body mass and weight could be a factor in survival. This is only a theory of mine which may be incorrect, but there are some very heavy elk here for rocky mountain elk.

Also NW Montana has elk that have substantial body dimensions.

high country - my cow elk from outside Carbondale, Colorado put 173 lbs of boned meat in the freezer. There were probably another 10 lbs of trimmings.

By comparison, my local yearling (spike/forkhorn) moose kills have fleshed out 230 to 270 lbs of weighed, boneless meat, from smallest to largest - most went smack in the middle. Interestingly enough, the smallest bodied one had 16 inch spikes, while the largest bodied one had 4 inch spikes. They were taken only about 10 miles apart, in the same second-growth burn area (Swanson River, '69) and about 3 years apart. And a pen-raised bull (by ADF&G) grew 40 inch antlers as a yearling! He too, came nowhere close to the record 1696 lb body weight they've recorded at the research pens. As I recall, he only went about 1400 as a 5 or 6 year old. Great rack, though!

Kind of got away from the chest-depth thing, didn't we? I did check with the biologists, and they thought my numbers for the various sized bull moose chest-depths were about right.

elk creek- another factor could be nutrition - what's in the soil. Afognak Island (next to Kodiak) weather isn't that much different from the Olympic Peninsula. The elk transplanted to Afognak came from the Olympic, yet, I am told, are much heavier bodied and lesser antlered. Again, I've been told by biologists, it is probably due to differing soil minerals and nutrients, although elevation, plant species, etc may also play a part.

Except for fawns and yearlings, deer really don't seem to vary too much from back to brisket, so I can see how a range finding-type apperatus as you speak of would work fine. Bull elk, however, really go up and down the scale. I've definitely seen the bulls that will go 30" with this measurement. But, I took a young bull a couple seasons back with a fork on one side and a 25" spike on the other. His back-to-brisket measurement was 19". That's a big difference.

Where I hunt, a 2-1/2 year old buck can weigh as little as 175lbs,While a mature buck may be as heavy as 350lbs or more.As such there can be a significant difference in the back to brisket dimension.

I've never hunted in those parts where 350lb bucks can be found, so I should have prefaced my response. But, a few years back I took a little forky mule deer in Colorado that maybe went 85lbs once field dressed. He went about 16" from back to brisket. That same afternoon, another guy in camp took a nice 4-point muley. His body weight really dwarfed my deer. We didn't get a chance to weigh him because we had to cut him up to get him out. His quarters were a chore to carry out, where I was able to grab all four hooves on mine and throw him in the back of the truck by myself. And even though the weight of those two deer was night and day, the back to brisket measurement of the larger buck went about 18" - only 2" more than my little buck. If that bigger buck's legs were say 2" longer as well, that would put the larger buck 4" above the smaller buck if they were standing side-by-side. That combined with a wider body would make him look much bigger, but still the back to brisket measurement isn't significantly different. I suppose my point is, even though deer can vary in size from back to brisket, it shouldn't be enough to throw off estimating range to the point that one would miss a 6 or 8" vital zone (providing they know what they're doing to start with).

Well 2" is about 11% difference.If you were to judge the yardage as 400 yards based on the back to brisket depth the result of an 11% difference would be 44 yards.At that distance 44 yards could very well make the difference between a clean kill and a wounded or missed deer.I used 400 yards as an example because I am assuming that if a person was to buy the B&C reticle,his intention would be to shoot out to at least 400 yards.

I like it when my numbers match someone else's. just proves elk are elk.....everywhere

elkcreek,

Sorry to be so long getting back, but was in Africa and then recovering (somehow it takes longer for jet lag to go away as we get older!).

Your theory makes sense. I also just measured a bunch of African animals, and habitat sure makes a difference....

JB

Wow...this is getting too left brained for me, but based on that logic (and I'm not saying it's bad logic), I guess none of us should even attempt to use any type of reticle, mil dots or whatever to try and estimate range of a critter at a distance since no one really knows the true back to brisket measurement of a given animal until it's on the ground and you have tape in-hand. They could be off by who knows how many inches, and as we can see, the percentages really start to work against you, even if you could bracket a mil dot with 2" at 400yds. Either way, I will respectfully leave this topic to those with more experience than myself (I have some loading to do anyway).

I guess that is why the laser rangefinders are selling so well. They offer accuracies to within a yard or two at 400 yards regardless of the back to brisket measurement.I use a leica 1200 yard unit myself.

I have been hesitant, but I'm looking to purchase my first range finder myself.