Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Average amount of processed meat?

Just trying to get a general idea of how much meat from a smallish 5x5 would be normal. Talked to the processor yesterday and they said there are two full boxes, 24"x16"x8" for the meat. I have to still get out to pick it up (processed locally in Colorado). Nothing fancy, mostly burger with a few steaks and a couple of roasts. Does that sound about right?

Sounds about right to me. 100# or so.

On most game animals you will realize approximately 36% of live weight of
processed meat.

Thank you. Had no real clue for an elk!

Most people way overestimate the amount of finished product they get from a critter and you hear some outlandish claims. You have boneless meat, then you trim it even more.

Sounds light to me, but just a little.
I'm betting they made lots of burger, too bad if they didn't trim the flat irons for you, I bet they went into burger. Lots of great steaks on an elk, many don't utilize them though. The sirloin is also a very good cut for a steak. Tri tips probably went to grind as well.
Those straps should have made quite a few nice steaks, I would look in the boxes and ask about the straps and see how many steaks they cut from them.
Burger alone should fill 1 box on a decent sized 5x5. We're getting over 50 lbs from our small cow elk and a spike combined.

Congrats on the bull !!

This seems to be spot on.A lot of what your get back depends on how much you waste.Some people only take the best parts and waste the rest instead of utilizing all the edible meat.

They were going to cut the back straps into steaks and the inside loins left whole. I have not looked at the box yet, just had a phone report

If a smaller 5x5 then probably good on that amount meat.
2 boxes just seems light to me but might not be.
Heck after processing 2 elk it seemed like we had tons of meat, lol.
If they had to hang it a few days to get to it then you'll have some dried meat loss too.

I've been processing my own since I shot my first deer back in 1965.

I cut all the meat off of the bones, and I trim anything white off the meat, including my burger meat, which I add 10% beef fat.

I figure that I put about 1/3 of the animal's live weight into my freezer.

The year that I shot my American Buffalo I had it processed. I told them to cut the backstraps and tenderloins into 1 1/2 pound steaks/roasts, and to grind everything else into burger with 10% beef fat added. I got 495# of burger and 1 box of steaks/roasts. The first steaks that we ate was so tough that I ground all of the other steaks/roasts and made it into jerky.

I don't remember ever weighing all of the cut and wrapped meat from all of the deer and elk that I've shot, but I do remember getting 175 pounds of burger off one 6x6 bull elk that I shot. I shot a young bull moose in Alberta this year and only brought 3 quarters from it home. I had 150 pounds of burger meat before adding 10% fat plus maybe 50 pounds of steaks/roasts.

Your amount sounds correct to me. I always get a chuckle out of people who claim the processor “stole” their meat. Thinking they should fill a chest freezer with a single elk. (Not saying that’s what you’ve done) The consensus is correct. A little over a third of the live weight as it lays on the ground

Just picked up my mule deer 66 lbs (approximately 2 1/2 yr old) and yearling cow elk 65.5 lbs.

Backstrap cut into short length (12") on both animals
Tenderloins
50 lbs pan sausage (elk)
Hamburgered the rest

Used to figure on 135 lbs yield from a mature sized cow elk, after taking the backstraps and tenders and neck meat off.

Did you bring in the entire carcass for processing or just quarters? How much meat was lost due to where it was hit?

Don't know I do my own and don't pick it up in a box. I can tell you from a small 6pt I got over 60lbs of burger and a bunch of steaks. Last year on a big bodied 5x5 I got almost 80lbs of burger and a lot of steaks. Never really weigh it all as I'm not worried about cheating myself.

Piece of mind is a good grinder, a sharp knife, and work.

Entire carcass. No meat loss from the shot - two through the chest broadside.

Here is some of my stuff.I killed a big cow elk and got 130lbs of boned out meat.A red deer hind boned out a 105lbs.The red stags I've killed boned out from 135lbs to 185lbs.Young Nilgai cow boned out @105lbs.Biggest South Texas whitetail buck boned out @ 75lbs.Biggest South Texas whitetail doe boned out @ 48lbs.

Two boxes of the size you mentioned, seems light for bringing in the entire carcass.

I process my own and when carrying packaged elk meat from my shop to the house the other day, I had 4 boxes(2 of my boxes were very close to the size your processor used). Each box probably weighed in the 40-50 lbs range.

The smaller the animal, the smaller the percentage of meat, I think. Both within species and between species.

One year I shot a 16 month old bull moose, butchered it myself at the Yukon River cabin I was staying in - totally boneless. It filled 5 1/2 apple boxes, packed before freezing - topped the last box out with chum salmon from the fish wheel. 6 or 7 fish, I think.

Wien Airlines( now defunct) had a hunting-season special backhaul from Galena to Anchorage - 300 lbs for some ridiculous amount- maybe $25. I addressed the boxes to my wife in Kenai, and they transshipped it to there at no extra cost. DEAL!!

When I took it into the Galena terminal (where they froze it overnight) and we put it on the scales the agent asked if I'd weighed it. I had not, but the weight came out to 300 and 1/2 lbs.

Minus the weight of the salmon, the wrapping paper, and the cardboard boxes I'd guess 260 lbs for the moose meat- about right for a 600 lb "yearling" . I've weighed 3 other moose of that age class; the boneless meat has varied from 233 lbs to 270 lbs.
after wrapping or vacuum seal.

Ive cut all my own elk for 50 years I weigh the packaged meat most years. I get anywhere from 100# to 185# of meat from an elk depending on a if it's a yearling cow or a bigger 6 point bull. You can tell how much meat you are going to get the minute you start quartering your beast. When you walk up to a dead big bull you know you are going to be eating a lot of tough steaks for a long time.

40% of live weight if you don't have to do a lot of trimming. This also depends on bullet placement. I have seen front shoulders completely ruined by a rapidly expanding bullet hitting the major bones in the socket.

Now how do I weigh them alive, so I know how much yield to expect?

Like I posted earlier, I've processed all of my own meat except for my Buffalo. Around here all processors are different. One might not take an animal that has been skinned in the field, one might not take meat that was bonned in the field, etc, etc.

Processors do not spend the time to trim "everything white" off of the meat, especially the meat that will be ground into burger.

The amount of meat lost due to where it was shot has a lot of variables: how many bullets hit it?; did the bullet hit a bone?; how fast was the bullet going when it hit the animal?
For many years I shot my elk with 180 gr Nosler Partition bullets shot from my .30 Gibbs, hitting them behind their shoulders. Many hits resulted in about a 1 foot diameter area of bloodshot meat around the bullet hole.

The first elk that I shot with my .300 Weatherby was a 5x5 bull that I killed with one shot behind his shoulder at about 100 yards with a 168 gr Barnes TSX bullet. I was amazed at the very small amount of bloodshot meat, probably less than 1/2 pound.

The next elk that I shot with that rifle was also a 5x5 bull that I also killed with one shot, but he was standing quartering to me when I shot, and the 168 gr TTSX bullet hit his upper front leg bone, just below the knuckle with his shoulder blade, and made mush of about half of that shoulder.

One year, one of the guys in our group of pronghorn antelope hunters said that he didn't like antelope meat, and he proceeded to drop his buck with a shot with his .300 Win through the hams that dropped the antelope, then he killed it with a shot through his front shoulders. About the only meat that wasn't ruined was the backstraps and the small tenderloins.

The best fomula I've seen for determining live weight has been the one from (I believe) Wyomong Fish and Game. Gutted weight with everything else still attached and mutilpy by 1.42 to get live weight. The last three guided hunts I've been on provided for weighing gutted carcasses before skinning. I presume some others do the same and, as I recall, processors also weigh them (or they used to). As for estimating meat loss with bloodshot or bullet-damaged meat, someone already mentioned it, Barnes TSX bullets cause very little bloodshot meat idamage wth a bullet placed behinds a shoulder. I've never hit bone with a Barnes, so don't know about that. I've found Nosler Partitions perform similarly to a Barnes TSX or TTSX and also cause little bloodshot meat or damage with behind-the-shoulder shots.

I believe the comment on 36% of live weight with boned-out, packaged meat is pretty accurate.

This was a smallish 5x5 bull. I am no expert in guessing the live weight of such an animal. The lady at the processing facility guessed it at 500 lbs

I've only weighed the total yield on one elk - a good sized 5x5. I processed it myself and really picked over the carcass. 1 shot behind the shoulder killed it, but I gave it a 2nd on the point of the shoulder. 150 lbs...

With deer, I'm usually between 45 and 65 lbs total yield.

Pick em clean. This one was smallish bull, I'd guess 120-130 lbs processed and cut clean.

I've taken a number of smaller builds to the processor over the years. Quartered with ribs boned typically weighed 220#-240# . That's what i paid for. The final product was less.

Hard to say if the amount you mention seems right without more info. hanging weight, was it whole, quartered and did you scrap all the rib meat and skirts steak,
What you call a "5x5 smallish bull" the weight could vary a lot, smallish antlers don't always mean smallish body, so weight is needed.
I live in pretty good elk country, have them in my pasture and yard almost every night and many times during the day, the rut drives me crazy as the bulls destroy a lot of small trees so i fence the better ones. I used to use a processor but finally built a walk-in cooler and started doing my own.

You’ve got some small elk there.

Hunting partner killed a nice fat 5x5 buil in Co 2 weeks ago. The bull had the courtesy to die right on the end of a short ATV trai. First time in over 20 years hunting elk we could drive the Polaris right to it. Hauled in my 3rd whole carcass to the butcher in about 30 elk taken in our group so more typical of a ranch hunt instead of our public land canyons & ridges.

He was good sized & fat pushing 700 lbs live weight. I’ve killed a couple larger but this was a nice bull. And the maximum yield possible - he got 5 milk crates full to the top of meat from the bull. At about 50 lbs per box I thought the meat yield was fantastic.

Your description of yield sounds like some we’ve gotten from animals killed near dark in steep terrain where field butchering is challenging & you don’t get all the meat off the animal.

Some of the Roosevelt elk on the coast are a LOT bigger than Rocky Mountain elk. Just like the people who mean whitetail when they say "deer", most folks mean Rocky Mountain elk when they say elk.

Our big Roosevelt bulls on a scale are big enough that I don't post actual weights anymore because the Colorado boys call me a liar. They are close to the weights of
2 and some three year old moose from southern BC. I will say that on my grandson's huge 5x5 Pope and Young Roosevelt bull, we boned him out and packed within a few ounces of 300 pounds up to the vehicle: scale weight. And that bull was not our biggest one, by quite a bit.

The weights posted to start this thread sound about right for similar Rocky Mountain bulls I have killed and processed, smaller than a big mature Rocky Mountain bull.

This was taken in whole, not field dressed so no losses there.

Many of the numbers posted are VERY light when compared to a large Roosevelt

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I would have deboned it and weigh it before dropping it off. Never drop off the back straps !
After getting shorted couple times, I started doing it myself.

It wasn’t a dig as my brother brought a 4 point from Colorado back that wasn’t a lot bigger than my biggest mule deer.