I am a total newbie to elk hunting and I have a question for the gurus. Does a bull add a point or two to his rack each year? Example: if a 3 1/2 yo is a 5x5 is he going to be a 6x6 or better when he is a 4 1/2 yo?

Not necessarily.
They can even lose a point from year to year.
Average mature elk will be a 6x6 but I’ve seen a monster 5x5 that would rival a 6 score wise.

Tom264, What is considered the mature age?

6.5 years is generally considered "mature", though with the right conditions the same bull can peak in rack size around 9.5 years +/-.

But it all "depends"...

This bull had an ear tag, I emailed the tag info to the State of Wyo per the instructions. He was 5.5 years old at harvest. I'm sure he would have only gotten bigger with another year.

Can't come up with the citation at the moment, but sheds were picked up annually from a bull on the Hanford area up through year 12 if I remember correctly. Maximum weight was year 9. Point counts have little relationship with age.

Don't have identifiable elk around but our local mule deer are sometimes 3 by's at 1 and 1/2. A buck that was 4by4 last year was a 3 by 4 this year.

This one was fairly easy to ID. Used to show up to raid droppings from Cookie's bird feeders.

First fall as a fawn at probably 6 months. No one ever owned up to the tagging.



Second fall at probably 18 months


Was a 4 by on the third fall but was poached and left between our archery and rifle seasons as a 4 by before we could get pics. Community was a bit upset over that.

Given good conditions, that bull would have increased in size for another 3-4 years+...

For sure. I would have loved to see his older brother, 3 years bigger!

Age isn’t what makes big antlers. Age will contribute to larger antlers on the same animal, but not all elk will grow 380 class antlers any more than a man will grow as tall as Shaquille O’neil if he gets old enough...

Age, nutrition and especially genetics (mommy's genetics are just as important as daddy's genetics) among other factors (injury, growing season, etc.) are what determines antler size/shape/mass/points.

As far as being a 5x5 vs 6x6 at different ages, I suspect genetics has the lion's share of influence there too, but dry years that don't produce good nutrition could also cause variances in the number of points from year to year, despite the bull aging. They most certainly will NOT simply add a point every year, like a ram adds a growth ring, if that's what you're asking. Plenty of 2.5 year old bulls are somewhere between a 3x3 and 5x5 raghorn and some may be a small 6x something the next year, or they may keep being a 5x whatever or maybe even something less. Some bulls never will be a 6x6, or even a 5x5 at any age, but I suspect those are relatively rare.

Elk can also 'shrink' horn size as they get older.

Ok, what is a reasonable accurate means to determine age of an elk on the foot? Internet shows using the ivories for aging after he is on the ground. Thanks Daniel

The only way to accurately judge the age of an elk is the upper jaw/teeth.

Field Guessing is rack size, coat color, paunch and (sway) back, not necessarily in that order.

Actually its the bottom jaw and rear molars. Go through any check station and that is what the bio will look at by cutting the cheek and using a pry tool to open the mouth.

There are several units in MT that FWP will pull a front bottom tooth to be sent to a lab. The tooth gets cut in half and aged by growth rings similar to a tree.

Never saw a deer family aged by upper jaw either, all done by lower jaw on deer here, so same family or genus or whatever would assume elk to be the same.

of course if there is an upper jaw chart and data I'd like to see it. Never to old to learn.

This^^

A bull that is going to be really big can score 300 B&C by the time he is 4 years, another 4 year old bull standing beside him can be a 4 point raghorn.........

Picked up a shed in CO one year I thought was interesting. About the same length and mass as your run of the mill raghorn 5by, but was simply a huge spike with a single brow tine about 8” long. I figured had I seen him and both sides matched I’d have had to shoot him to be the only guy I know to have killed a 2x2 bull that wasn’t a fork horn.

My uncle shot one back in the 80’s that was a fork horn like a young buck deer. Bases were big enough to have been a raghorn 3x3 or 4x4 but his antlers just went up about 16” and had a fork about 5” deep and wide. Both points on both sides were curled in so when viewed from the side it looked like a pair of hearts.

Gosh--it's amazing how much you can learn here that just isn't so!

You’re exactly right, and is what I meant to say... not sure how I got it backwards... Dyslexic moment of the day!

I shot a 7x8 bull back in 2000 that barely scored 300. He was a big old heavy horned bugger with the tops palmed out like a moose, but most of the tines were short. Teeth were about shot, ivories have some great character - steaks were tough as shoe leather, made burger out of most of him. Would have been interesting to know how hold he was.

That is a interesting rack. I was in jackson hole, wyoming at the elk refuge and remember them saying about the color of horns, prime age for size, ect. It was a great learning experience and the guides will forget more about elk than i will ever know.