Can anyone tell me what is the average distance from an elks backbone to it's brisket. I got the new Boone and Crockett reticle Leupold and it tells you how to range a whitetail. I'm not substituting this for a rangefinder, I'm just curious so if something goes wrong with the rangefinder, I have some idea how to figure out the distance. Thanks!!

Approximately 24"

You talking a mature bull and or are you wondering about a juvi?

Mark D

Just measured a mature mount and it was 28"

Oops I was asking the other fella sorry.

24" sounds a bit weak, I would have to get home to look at my book and see what they've measure to be sure.

But off of memory I would say a juvi could be in the mid to upper 20's (25-30) and I would say that a mature bull would be in the 34" range.

But I sure don't trust my memory anymore...grins

Mark D

Just got on the ladder and measured better,your correct Mark measures 32". It's nice 5x5 but not a monster

Thanks. For ranging a deer with the b&c reticle it says the back to brisket for a whitetail is 16". If you adjust the power on the scope so that the center of the reticle hits the back and the top of the lower picket hits the brisket, then whatever the yardage is on the scope is the approximate range to the target. So I'm figuring with 32"(ballpark) for a mature elk, that would have me fitting back to brisket between the upper and lower pickets on the reticle. Like I said before, I'm taking a rangefinder with me but I want a backup plan just in case.

OK - I'm sticking my neck way out here, as I know next to nothing about elk - but I do know a bit about moose- particularly the largest Yukon-Alaska variety, which I hunt here on the Kenai, and have killed a couple dozen , though the largest of the large inhabit the Interior, by general consensus.

I'm in doubt of that 34" measurement for an average elk bull, as the average (4 or 5 year old) moose bull only goes 30 to 32 inches back to brisket. I'm using the back-line, not the top of the hump. And skin to skin - not any hanging hair. A big bull moose 7 to 10 or 12 years old might go 36 inches or a bit more. A yearling goes about 22 to 24, usually. These are my own field measurements, not mount measurements. I find it curious that an 800 lb animal will have the same chest measurements of a 1200 lb animal. Frankly, I think someone's stretching things somewhere, but ICBW, and/or my measurements skewed somehow. Death flattening?

What parameters are you guys using? back-line or top of hump? Was this 34" a really big bull elk?

Why is this measurement important to you? I just researched my moose book, and can't find any reference as yet to biologists using this measurement for any reason. They use chest girth, and length of animal to get a rough estimate of the moose's size sometimes. Mere top to bottom doesn't tell them anything, apparently.

Now, I used to use (before LRF) this measurement as a rough range-finding factor myself, using 30" and my duplex cross-hairs to get a fair idea of distance to target. Still do sometimes in the alpine country on sheep or caribou if I don't have the LRF with me. Before each moose season, I'd set up a 30" target and look at it at 100 yard increments through the scope to refresh my memory. It wasn't all that accurate, but better than nothing. Used in conjunction with the Mark 1 eyeball, it gave me two estimations. But a LRF, which I now have, beats either or both all hollow.

Of course, out to 300 yards or so, it just doesn't matter. I've never shot a moose over 160 yards, and only 3 over 100, but it's best to be prepared if needed.

las: Don't know about others but I picked up the number from Bob Hagel years ago,accepted it as gospel and never challenged it through a decade of lots of elk hunting,but it sure coulda been wrong!I did use the duplex trick (pre-LRS days)to kill a couple big bulls at about 450 yards,based on the 32" deal.I heard that 18" is for a big mule deer but IME I've shot several that easily exceeded 20". I dunno!

At the risk of pulling an Eremicus , Mule Deer had a write-up on this in the No. 4 Nosler manual. Here's what he put forth for males of different species:

• Pronghorn 15" +/- 1"
• Deer (WT & MD) 18" +/- 1"
• Mature bull elk 32"-35"
• Caribou 22" +/- 1"
• Sheep 18" +/- 1"

ETA- to clarify, those are chest dimensions, and not to be confused with anything else!

If you can get a good lock at the head, from center of ear hole to tip on nose is 18". My shepard scope has 18" circles and I heard this so I've been measureing from ear to nose on the elk we've gotten. Its within 2" spike to big 6pt. at least on the elk out here on the coast.

Jamie

Now you've piqued my interest- It's been 5 or 6 years since I made these measurements, and my memory may be slipping. I'll have to take some more measurements now , and write them down this time n my notebook - I'll also contact a couple biologists I know to see if they know- (2 aren't home, a third had no idea, just before I wrote this).

Thank God for LRF - I use a 400, cuz I don't really want to shoot past that anyway, and it's what I could afford. Mostly I range objects and landmarks beforehand from stand sites and on pre-established positions waiting for caribou, or on frequently hunted areas. I've had the LRF for two years, and have yet to range an animal I've shot. While this may not work all that well for "free range" critters, for stand hunted critters and familiar areas it will - I have, in my moose hunting areas, ranged by LRF or pacing, various distances across meadows, lakes, alpine, and the like, printed up teeny tags, and put them on my map (1K per inch, approximately, for my moose maps- I blow standard topos up on the color printer at Mailbox outlet), laminated under plastic. (Note: for pacing distances across lakes, it's much easier when the water is stiff! ) I have yet to shoot anything using this info, but......

This body-part-index measurement business is interesting, both for ranging and sizing. We have a form of slot limit on moose in my hunting area. Rule is legal bulls have to have a spike or fork on at least one side, OR, are 50" or larger in spread (hard to get a tape on those suckers!), OR have at least 3 brow tines on at least one side (safest proposition, in a hurry - but not all that safe! But I've shot a number of legal 3-brow, mid-40 inch bulls. Meat in the freezer!).

From past measurements of several years ago (I went dry for 3 years ), I know an adult bull moose has an ear 11 inches long, hide to tip. Factoring in the distance between the ear bases, I determined that if the ear is horizontal, and there is an additional ear length (be honest!) of antler beyond the ear tip (make sure the antlers are symmetrical, more or less!), then he should go 52". That gives a ooopsi margin of 2 inches. Don't cheat on it.

Last fall I walked around a bush, the bull at 70 yards (30 feet in front of my tree stand I'd left a half hour earlier)) raised his head to look at me as I whipped the rifle up (no time for binocs), he flopped an ear out sideways, looked like a full ear length of antler beyond, both sides about the same, checked for brow tines - looked like 3 on his left, no time to check the right as he turned to run - and I busted him.

Elapsed time about 6 seconds. He lied about the brow-tines - he had a double set of palm and brow tines on each side, one growing out the top of the palm, the other out of the bottom. Now, he did have 3 brow tines over there- but they were on different planes - and the technical description does not allow for that. (I would have had a good argument in court, tho!) I had not noted the unusual antler configuration- only the total width. Spread was 52 and 1/8, so brow tines were mute, and width was what I was shooting him on anyway. The brow tines were just a double-legal check- erroneous in this case due to non-typical configuration and viewing angle.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Here is a link, don't know how credible it is especially after looking at the gopher measurement, har har.

No link here....

here it is
http://www.abousainc.com/ATsystem.htm

I always measure chests from hair to hair, because that is what we use in the field to estimate range.

Have measured a bunch of elk, both freshly dead and on the wall, over the years--and eventually found it was a mistake to measure mounts. Taxidermists often stretch the hide to cover a larger form. That was where I got the 35-inch measurement.

It takes a really big bull to measure 30-32 inches, and that would be when he is fat, early in the fall. Have measured mature but not huge 6x6 bulls that went 26-28. Mature cows and raghorns usually go around 23-34". Spikes grow rapidly across the fall, so can start not much bigger than a mule deer, but end up in November around 20", maybe a little more.

It takes a HUGE animal to measure more than 36" top to bottom. I have taken a few that measured right around 36--a good-sized Alaskan moose and Namibian eland, an old Cape buffalo, a 3-year old bull bison. Big bull bison get larger, and eland and Alaskan moose might as well, but outside of a game farm I doubt there are many 36-inch elk.

JB

Thanks for the revised measurements.

There are considerable variations in elk size just like there are in humans. We can say the average male is 5'11" or whatever the Nat average is, but there are a lot of us smurfs, and quite a few 6'6"++ guys on the other spectrum.

My buddy killed a big bodied bull in AZ one year that they were able to get a jeep to. They brought it out whole. A biologist had set up in Alpine and asked to weigh and measure it. It weighed something over 900# field dressed- this my friends is a HUGE bodied elk. The others checked that same time were in the 500-600# range.

An outfitter buddy of mine, who has killed a lot of elk, says that the Roosevelts he kills every year in CA are fully 25% bigger than ANY rocky mountain elk he has ever seen. I know this doesn't help on body size measurements but it may help explain why the disparity in size.

I have seen one elk that I thought could make the 1000#.

In the late 60's, a bull was killed near Lake City in Colorado, had suffered some "accident" that made him into a "steer". The field dressed carcass was brought to Gunnison. His estimated live weight was ~1200#.

In the harsh winter of 1983-84, CDOW had a statewide emergency feeding program. We were on the outskirts of Gunnison late one winter afternoon watching the feeding by helecopters. A HUGE bull came down with several other bulls. His B&C score was over 400. A lot of people saw him during the latter stages of the feeding program. When he pulled up side by side with a spike, his body was easily 2 feet longer than the spike. He was pushing a 1000#. Geez was he big.

Roosevelts tend to run about 10% greater weight. But so much depends on age--and habitat. Personally, here in Colorado, I think the elk have gotten smaller. If that is true, I speculate it is because of elk densities in Colorado.

Beginning in the 1960's Roosevelts were transplanted to a couple islands off the Alaskan coast. These islands had not been grazed since the last "mini" mammoths had died off on the islands about 7000 years before. So, for a while, there was this "super forage" for the elk. The first few generations of elk grew super huge. Out of curiousity, Alsaka killed three bulls. All three were well over 1000#, and if I remember correctly, one bull was almost 1400#. After a while though, the forage was reduced to a more "normal" level, and the elk weights declined to about the same size as the mainland Roosevelts in Pacific Northwest where the original transplants came from.

So much depends on weather and habitat.

Casey

IIRCC, that "new range" business produced a caribou in excess of 700 lbs field dressed out on Adak Island, a few years after they were introduced.

On the other side, I talked to a fellow a few years ago that took what he thought was going to be an exceptionally nice ram out of the Tok Management Area up in central Alaska. On walk-up, it turned out to be a dwarf with about a 32 inch head. Looked big thru the optics, tho. Ooops! It was more than full curl, and legal, but the check station guys made them lay out every piece of meat to be sure they had it all, there was so little of it.

As far as cow size goes, my moose book claims that on really good forage, yearlings will sometimes be bred, but this stunts their final adult size. Normaly, they will breed for the first time as 27 month old animals. Presumably very poor forage may do the same, although cows may not breed until they are 3 in that case.

I did notice that the cow elk I shot in Colorado last fall was not as big as those mounted in bass Pro, even though my partner/guide claimed mine was "really big". There could be several explanations for these disparities.

Looks like using "average" size for range determination can be a bit chancy- but then we all probably knew that anyway. But if it's all you have......

Never did get back to the biologists for input on "average" moose depths- but eventually I will.

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.