Elk

I just kept trying to breathe. The big bull elk was trotting forward with his head down as he chased another bull down the side of the mountain. “He’ll stop,” I said to myself as I did my best to hold down the rising panic I felt fluttering in my chest. He was 350 yards away, and I tried not to look...

If you’ve hunted elk in the backcountry, you likely know a couple things to be true: it’s fun as hell, and big bulls often like to die in the gnarliest, nastiest places imaginable. While there’s not much you can do about that, there are a few ways you can shorten your packout, and it all depends on...

September is only a few days away, but we can already hear the bugles echoing off steep mountain slopes and the crash of antlers through the brush. To say we’re excited for elk season is an understatement. That’s why we want to see photos of the biggest and baddest bull elk you’ve captured on a...

In the realm of the average hunter, elk are king. While the one-percenters busy themselves with $50,000 sheep tags, or African safaris to quickly fill up their trophy rooms, the Rocky Mountain elk remains at the top of the heap for most hunters. Why shouldn’t it? Bulls can weigh four times that of a...

For most hunters living on the East Coast, hunting elk usually involves traveling hundreds of miles to the Western wilderness stronghold states of Montana, Wyoming, or Colorado. But, after decades of absence in the East, they’re starting to reclaim their former range. They’re not as abundant as...

There isn’t a more coveted game animal for the common hunter than a bull elk. Sure, the one-percenters might get glossy-eyed over some type of sheep that lives in the mountains of some country most folks have never heard of, but for the average hunter, it’s the Rocky Mountain elk. This is a hunt...

If you’re feeling a little too cheerful about hunting, and you’re interested in inducing a bout of depression, do a quick search on over-the-counter elk hunting odds. They aren’t great, but what’s worse, is that most info you’ll find that is focused on easy-to-get tags, is far worse. The bitching is...

Blue whales have them. Songbirds have them. Turns out bugling bull elk have them too. Not just a song of their species, but local dialects that separates their tunes from others in geographic locations. In a discovery that may stir the coals of campfire debates for many Septembers to come...

This video shows a herd of elk booking it over a fence. Who knows what’s making them move—could be predators, could be hunting pressure, or maybe they just felt like running. The cows and calves make it over the barbed wire with some effort, but they’re moving remarkably faster than the 6x7 bull in...

Jason Phelps is quick to admit that you don’t need to sound like a verbatim elk to get one inside arrow range. He’s spent a lot of his life building tools for us to speak with the big tan-and-chocolate creatures, but he says a simple mastery of truck-cab bugling won’t prepare you well for actually...

As antler-obsessed humans, we usually look at pointy beams with awe and excitement. Rarely do we consider their potential for destruction. That is, until we come face-to-face with with a strong-willed animal like Tyler and Sheena Terryberry of Parshall, Colorado, did during a morning drive on Jan....

Scoring a bull elk is quite similar to scoring a deer but with some added complexity due to the sheer length of those much bigger antlers. The total score number will include the inches in the length of the main beams, length of the tines, the inside spread, and the volume of the antlers. And we'll...