Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting What is it about elk.....

I won’t argue the merits or pitfalls of elk hunting or elk hunters. I attempt to steer clear of the dipsticks and drunken yahoos and hunt elk at my own pace and style. In recent years that has been private land with no public access. I enjoy hunting in peace and safety. I deer hunt on a 2,200 acre lease (no fences) where there is seldom more than 5 hunters, except maybe on a Saturday which I don’t hunt, spread out on 40 to 100 acre blocks. Tranquility is priceless.

The 'monarch' is probably that cow with her nose in the air right behind him. The meanest, raunchiest old cow in the herd runs the show, not the bull. The herd bull's main job is to pass his genes to the next lead cow.

But you never hear of anyone ever killing one of those. Hell, every cow killed on this site is described as being a "nice, young cow"....... How the heck does everyone know their disposition?......grin

Roe deer hunting is neat due to their association with the British aristocracy, though they live all over Europe and normally in much more gentle terrain.

I have killed both roe bucks and plenty of elk and will take elk myself, simply due to the habitat they live in and they way they're normally hunted. They're both fun as hell and rewarding though. No doubt.

Roe deer are a tiny member of the deer species.
Red deer are large Elk like animals.

If you had a time machine.

My '21 elk was a sultry yearling cow. She was a very sweet young thing who innocently stood there fluttering her eyelashes at me while I administered her medicine. However, even the young ones take the advice of their older friends and quickly start playing hard to get so you can't give them too much time to change their style of flirtation.

How cool would that be!

I don’t know that I would agree with that. I have never heard anyone say, “wow, look at that lead cow, I want to shoot it”!

Besides that, anyone hunting elk will have witnessed the biggest bull coming into view after most of the other bulls have passed. There is always a better reason to lead from the rear…

I killed one cow in NM that I think was too old to walk off the mountain.Another one in the north end of the Gila in NM with a ML.

Both pretty tough. The toughest killed was an old cow moose on a RFW hunt on Silver Spur Ranch near Walden, CO. CPW said she was at least eight years old, but could not tell me how old after that.I t took me 5 years to eat her.

Usually though, cows area a lot better eating that stinky old bulls in rut.

Don’t forget to sneak up and give her a tug to make sure she’s “dry”. If she really is nice she probably won’t mind.

Shot a big ol cow once. First thing I did was pull down her lip and see she had no front teeth. She was huge, went all into burger. GFP said she could have easily been in her late teens or 20.

I got one of those once, picking the largest cow in a bunch. Not many teeth and she was aged around 17. It was like eating cardboard, dry and terrible tasting…

The last elk I shot was the biggest cow in the herd and was the lead cow. I butchered it myself. I tried eating a steak. Then I ground the meat in my grinder. The hamburger was tough. I gathered it all up, took it to the local butcher. It's now salami, different kinds of sausage and sticks. I was planning on doing the sausage thing myself but didn't.
I think I'll be looking for a younger animal this year. I'm applying several places and have my fingers crossed.

If Irish Elk were still around I presume they’d mainly be on preserves or estates like Red Stag are in the UK, but I’d pay to hunt one anyhow. Holy hell that’d be awesome…

My dad was a serious elk hunter starting in the 50’s—back when there was a small fraction if he elk we see today, and even smaller number of elk hunters.

I started following my dad elk hunting on pack trips as a kindergartener in the early 60’s. Killed my first elk in 1971. Killed my second elk with a Bear Grizzly 55lb in 1972. Elk hunting has indeed changed. The popularity of elk hunting is beginning to work against elk and hunters it seems.

As to the three ring circus that elk hunting can be, these last few pandemic years brought lots of people out of the woodwork who never hunted, or were occasional hunters at best. I think (maybe a hope), that some of this will subside. Especially as success has become more difficult in recent times.

As an added note, technology is adding to the impacts and visibility of hunters as we are out hunting. The advent and popularity of 4wd’s in the late 60’s, ATV’s, UTV’s, GoreTex, rangefinders, GPS, Google maps, all this tech is increasing the impact—on critters and us hunters in the field.

AlpineCrick,

Well said!

Regards,
Manny

Deer are meat to me. Enjoy it, yes. But doesn't make me stupid.

Elk are something different. Great meat, yes. But the hunt is something different.

I studied them a bit in high school. To me they were the coolest animal going. Something about an animal that looks like an elk with moose antlers.

Imagine the [bleep] show over what caliber needed to take an Irish Elk Ted! Hahahaha

I’d gladly join your campfire for that sorta hunt. Imagine packing those rear legs..

Spot on Alpinecrick

People seem to have more money and time to travel to hunt. Demand for non-resident tags is shooting up. Idaho offers some non-res deer and elk tags by draw and some OTC. They had to put a quota on the OTC tags as demand was outstripping the number of tags they could issue. In Dec, they put a total of about 30k non-res OTC deer and elk tags on sale online at the same time. The demand was far higher than in past years. They had 64k hunters online all at the same time and it crashed the system. I'm guessing that they'll all be by draw next year. This was a real mess.