Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting What's a Quartered Elk Weigh?

I've often wonder this myself. I've never weighed quarters when I got home, but wish I would have. On our opening week hunt, our guest hunter, Beau Baty, shot a bull. Given Beau weighs everything for llamas so that each side of the load is balanced to the pound, this seemed like a good time to film such. Thanks to Marcus (camera guy) for the idea and for filming it.

This was an average sized 4.5 year old (best estimate of age) bull, weighed with bone in. The elk I have shot in central and eastern MT have larger bodies than what I see in the mountains here in SW MT. Not sure if that is a result of higher quality forage in certain habitats or something else.

Interested what all you might have for weights on bulls you may have put on a scale.

skin off, bone in, quarters, neck, brisket, rib and loin on a 6x6 bull I killed this year weighed 278 lbs on a butchers scale.

So what do the Llama's weigh?

I know when I have to pack them out 4+ miles they weigh a ton! looking forward to the results.

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.

hopefully I'll get to find out in a few weeks what a cow elk weighs. Love watching your videos Randy, had no idea you were on here. Your videos along with this site and rockslide have been a wealth of information for this newbie western hunter

I've weighed a pile of cows and young bulls boned out. Never had one break 200. Had an outfitter tell me the biggest bull they ever killed had 89lb hind quarters bone in. Most think they all weigh1k on the hoof.

The only one I ever weighed was a mature 6 point bull from the breaks. Bone in - hide on, the fronts were 60 each and the rears were 80 each. After skinning and deboning they lost ~ 20 lbs a piece.

I weighed the hinds of the 6x bulI got this year. 55 pound. Skinned. Although I took more than I usually off of the lower legs, but they would h not have added 10 pounds

Half a young bull carcass taken last year weighed 148 lb on the processors scale. No hide, head, innards, legs off, split right down the backbone from neck to tailbone. That would seem to fall in line with 500+/- dressed weight. My son shot a big 6x6 in 2007 and the processor estimated him to be 700-800 lb on the hoof. Can’t swear to that weight, but he dwarfed the 550-600 lb bull I shot the same evening. They are all bigger the further you have to drag them! That day we were lucky. All downhill, snow cover, only a few yards to a meadow, and lots of help getting both on a drag sled. Happy Trails

I have a PDF write up done by Wyoming University in 2003 that gives weights of elk from calves to ten year old,bulls and cows. Actual weights and how to figure live weights. Along with aging data. To large to post here and format changes when I try.

PM me with your email address and I will send it

My youngest cuts up wild game locally and the biggest elk this year was 475 pounds hanging, full carcus...He said the average runs 250-275 pounds, but that's not just the quarter,ofcourse...Hanging weight of the animal ready to be cut up...Total weight..

Or just link to the pdf. LINK

Along with all the other publications on wild game UW Extension has. http://www.uwyo.edu/foods/educational-resources/wild-game.html

Four quarters, two back straps, two tenderloins weighed 169 lbs. on the butcher's scale. That was a decent sized cow, bone-in, and skinned shot this rifle season.

I participated in the elk reduction effort in Teddy Roosevelt Nat'l Park in 2011. They took all cow elk that year and If I'm remembering correctly, the largest rear quarter was 71# bone-in off of a giant old grand-mammy.

That’s believeable.... I’ve killed and been around a lot of elk, people waaay overestimate them, like bear, fish, deer etc....

I just picked up the spike bull I shot last Thursday, and the wrapped meat weighed 180 lbs. Some of that weight was the beef tallow I had added to the burger. Subtract that (15 lbs) so the animal without any bones weighed 165lbs. Oh, I didn't subtract the paper and tape!

I am really glad I didn't have a shot at a bigger bull.

Ken

Haha lotsa folks are killlin elk sized deer perty regular... grin

You boys are shooting Roosevelt elk so they tend to run a little bigger than those rocky mtn elk we were shooting in eastern Oregon.

I've never weighed one either.....

I do know that when I drew a tag, the Alaska F&G sent me a letter stating that the Roosevelt bulls on Afognak and Raspberry Islands can weigh in excess of 1200-1300 pounds. I thought: "no way". I've killed lots of elk and even though Roosevelts are bigger, there's no way an elk can be that big.

Well when I got over to my bull, I scratched my head and said $hit.....I'll bet this thing weighs 1200-1300 pounds....
Each boned out quarter was substantially heavier than the bone in quarters of the Rocky Mountain raghorn I killed a couple weeks ago.

Further north one goes,the elk run bigger. Elk shot say in Alberta are bigger/heavier than the elk shot in Colorado,although they are both descended from Yellowstone elk.
Look at bears. The largest , Brown and Polar are far north.

Where's the story on your Afognak elk hunt?

My experience is from 65 to 95 pounds.

The Roosevelt elk on Afognak are from judman part of Washington. One day I might go there too hunt on Afognak, but I do not want to deal with Brn bears. Yeah I'm a big sissy lol..

I have not put one out there...too much to tell.

I'll PM you some pictures.

BTW, the bears are real on that island.....they're no joke.

Bergman's rule. It sure is true in the elk situation.

Why are they packing out testicles? Proof of sex?

My guess is because they want to be like MeatEater.

Up here in Alaska antlers are not proof of sex, so nuts/penis need to be naturally attached. If not the troopers will
Have field day with you.

Fella up here in Alaska Nick Muche is his name he’s all over interweb, he’s sponsored by companies shot everything there is too shoot up here in Alaska, except for an elk. He says he won’t waste his time on afognak elk because it’s a second rate elk hunt. Truth be told, I think he’s scared of them crazy ass Brn bears, and doesn’t want to fess up to it.

I sure didn't think it was a second rate hunt. We pulled two massive herd bulls out.

When we got back to Kodiak, I talked to some folks who had hunted Raspberry Island (which I assume is the hunt Nick Muche is waiting for), and they only got one small, busted up rag bull.

I don't know how much effort they put into it though.

Ya you guys did well!!

65-90lb with bone. Meat pack 50lb 😎

I don't think any of those island elk hunts are easy..

The first elk I shot was a Roosevelt bull I shot in Northern California in 1995. I quartered it the classic way by sawing down the backbone and then cutting in half. The 4 quarters bone in weighed in at 535 pounds. A couple of years later a friend drew the same tag and shot a larger bull and it weighed more but I do not remember how much more. The second elk I got was a cow Rocky in Murders Creek unit in Oregon. I think the quarters weighed in at around 50 or 60 pounds. I got my 3rd elk a couple of weeks ago. A large Roosevelt cow in Northern California. This time I boned her out and left the backbone in the field. I did not weigh her but I would be willing to bet she weighed more than the average Rocky bull. I filled up a new 15 cu foot chest freezer I bought for the purpose.

The cow I took to a processor in Gunnison weighed an even 300# on the rail-field dressed, head, hide and legs off. She was a good sized dry cow.

With a pork carcass in that condition they say you loose about 60% of the weight....so if this ratio stays true with elk (300) / (.6) = 500 pounds. That's a mature cow but I would believe it.

I killed one in Montana in 2010 that I would bet was closing in on 600 pounds live weight, maybe more. It had a noticeably bigger body than any raghorn bull that I have killed.

The black bears in Pennsylvania break this rule, killed a 500 pounder 300 yards from camp 3 years ago. Nearly 700 pounder less than a mile from my house last year.

MM

When we quarter a bull, we quarter the bull. Cut the head off, then cut in half north/south between the second and third ribs. Sharp hatchet and a maul to cut the pelvis, then split the spine all the way up.

I killed a bull a few years ago, the only one I ever got a weight on, and even then just one of the hind quarters. It came in a 105 pounds, which explains why I hurt so bad for a week after packing it out of the wilderness.





P

Wait until we start talking moose!

As indicated by the weights posted by a couple of coastal hunters, Roosevelt elk are a LOT bigger and heavier than Rocky Mountain elk.

I have pondered whether to post the weight of the heaviest Roosevelt bull I ever heard of, but think I will pass and skip being called a liar. FWIW it was NOT an average elk, but was huge in every dimension including antlers. A cousin killed it and since it was warm weather, took to a meat cutter where the skinned quarters were weighed on a butcher's scale. The butcher said, “That can't be right,” and weighed it again. In more than 20 years of weighing elk, this one was over 100 lbs. heavier than any he had weighed. The weight was comparable to a mature bull moose in the southern Interior of BC. My family has killed several Roosevelts with scale weights comparable to scale weights of southern moose.

I weigh and record the parts all the time for my own reference. I hunt in SW MT. Mature bull elk are about like this with hide off:

rear quarters: 65lbs
front quarters: 35 lbs
meat from frame: 80 lbs
skull: 25 lbs

These are skin off and hock off. Add about 10 lbs per quarter for skin (if my quarter has skin on it has extra to wrap around and protect the meat, so this figure might be high for you). I haven't witnessed much variation in weight of quarters in 6 pt bulls. The loose meat from the frame varies the most. Sometimes I lose a lot due to blood shot. This amount varies the most also for bigger/smaller animals, as some have a couple of inches of meat around the ribs and some are pretty lean. Often I de-bone one front it seems due to bullet damage, too. The skull obviously varies a lot as well but this figure is for a ~300" bull with skin/lower jaw removed (5 pt skull weighed 18 lbs for reference, 320" just under 30lbs). When you shoot a decent bull you should plan to hike out about 300 lbs if you keep the bone in the quarters, and I don't want to hike out de-boned meat for purposes of hanging/aging/identifying cuts.

I hope that helps.

I shot a big cow a couple days ago. We weighed the hind quarters to balance them for a llama load. We separate them at the ball joint and remove the lower leg. These weighed 44 lb. Most cow quarters will be in the 35 to 40lb range. This gal was the biggest I've shot since I got the llamas 9 years ago.

I have found Headwatermike's figure pretty darn close

..

.

Couple guys in the shop at my new job killed a couple of thousand pound cows a couple weeks ago. 🙄

I’d of guessed them closer to 350 dressed from the pics but I guess they were more densely boned than normal elk.

Had a 5x5 bull weigh 528# at the processor, field dressed, skin on, head and legs off. Younger son killed cowzilla, huge, weighed 458# at the processor, skin on, field dressed, head and legs off. Oldest son took a cow, quartered, skin on the quarters with back straps weighed 168# at the processor..

When you guys say quarters do you mean legs?

Yes. Removing all 4 quarters of meat (legs) and the rest in a separate game bag (backstraps, tenderloins, neck meat, and other miscellaneous scraps).

The only two bulls the meat was weighed were 225# and 250# of deboned meat. Seems like three heavy, or four tolerable pack loads for me is the norm.

Boned out bull I killed in 2015 weighd 240

A cow elk that I killed back in 08 weighd 350 with no head, hooves,hide or guts....but full of bones