Planning a profitable elk hunt requires a ton of prep work. Plenty of hunters concentrate on the apparent stuff like health and equipment, however understanding elk feeding habits ought to be extra than simply one other process in your to-do listing. It’s a key to unlocking their day by day actions and patterning their conduct. It may be simply as vital as honing your capturing abilities and preseason scouting. Lke whitetails and different ungulates, elk are largely pushed by their bellies. By understanding what meals elk eat (and when), you possibly can plan your hunt extra strategically and enhance your probabilities of success. So, what do elk eat? Right here’s a useful breakdown.
An Elk’s Food regimen Is Principally Vegetation
Like their whitetail cousins, elk are herbivores, which means they spend their days plowing by Mom Nature’s pure salad bar. These hefty critters are each grazers (they eat grass and herbaceous crops like cows) and browsers (which implies they eat leaves, shoots, and fruits from shrubs and bushes like whitetails).
If we choose what elk like to eat based mostly solely on what they might eat in probably the most amount, it will be grass, hands-down. Grasses make up 73 p.c of an elk’s eating regimen on common. Elk graze on grass year-round when it’s obtainable, in line with the Rocky Mountain Elk Basis. It doesn’t actually matter what sort of grass both. As an example, they eat wheatgrass, bromegrasses, bluegrass, and fescue in abundance. Elk do have a choice for sure forbs like sticky geranium, false dandelion, wild lupine, aster, elk sedge, and shadbush, all of that are documented favorites.
Picture by Alice Jones Webb
However simply since you eat quite a lot of one thing doesn’t imply it’s your favourite meals. I eat a heckuva lot of rice on a weekly foundation, largely as a result of it’s low cost and available. Given the selection between a bowl of rice and a slice of chocolate cake, I’m going with the cake each time. Elk are a lot the identical means.
Elk aren’t restricted to feeding in open meadows and grassy fields. Elk additionally roam in timber and thick brush, looking on woody vegetation, and when given the possibility, elk will completely chow down on agricultural crops like corn, soybeans, and alfalfa. Elk additionally appear to think about clover as their ungulate model of chocolate cake.
Elk are massive animals and it takes quite a lot of vegetation to maintain their huge our bodies going. On common, elk should eat about 3 kilos of meals every day for each 100 kilos of physique weight. So for an 800-pound bull, that’s a whopping 24 kilos of grass, forbes, and leaves day by day. When you could have an entire herd of elk devouring that a lot vegetation, you start to appreciate why farmers get so annoyed with elk of their alfalfa.
Elk’s Favourite Grasses
- Bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicatum)
- Geyer’s sedge (Carex geyeri)
- Idaho fescue (Fetusca idahoensis)
- Torrey fescue (Fetusca scabrella)
- Annual bluegrass (Spoa spp.)
- Junegrass (Koeleria cristata)
Elk’s Favourite Forbs
- False dandelion (Agoseris glauca)
- Sticky geranium (Geranium viscosissimum)
- Lupine (Lupinus spp.)
- Aster (Aster spp.)
- Clover (Trifolium spp.)
Elk’s Favourite Timber and Shrubs
- Saskatoon serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia)
- Pink stem ceanothus (Ceanothus sanguineus)
- Snowbrush (Ceanothus velutinus)
- Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides)
- Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana)
- Antelope bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata)
- Gambrel oak (Quercus gambelii)
- Willow (Salix spp.)
What Elk Eat By way of the Seasons
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Elk are opportunistic feeders, which implies they adapt their consuming habits to no matter forage is out there and provides probably the most diet. Modifications in seasons deliver shifts in meals sources. Understanding these shifts may also help you find extra elk.
Spring
Spring is the season of awakening, and elk take full benefit of all that contemporary, inexperienced progress. After the lean occasions of winter, elk want nutrient-dense meals to replenish power and exchange the burden they misplaced through the winter and the rut.
Elk discover early-greening grasses and forbs akin to clover, dandelion, and Indian ricegrass significantly tasty, and the excessive protein content material of those meals additionally means they’re nutritionally priceless. South- and west-facing slopes are the primary to inexperienced up in early spring, so these places are the place elk have a tendency to assemble. The animals will transfer to greater elevations to observe the wave of recent progress, which can assist help all their dietary wants, together with help for being pregnant, lactation, and antler progress.
Summer time
Summertime is a time of dietary loads for elk herds. The elk’s summer time eating regimen is generally composed of forbs akin to dandelion, geranium, asters, and clover. In areas with ample forbs, these herbaceous flowering crops could make as much as one hundred pc of an elk’s day by day consumption.
Picture by Alice Jones Webb
Fall
As summer time turns to fall and inexperienced crops turn into a lot tougher to seek out, elk shift their eating regimen to include extra browse. Though grass continues to be the primary element of their eating regimen, sure crops akin to Oregon cherry, prairie sagewort, and alpine forget-me-nots react to the season’s first frosts by producing a blast of calorie-dense sugar with the primary wave of frost, serving to elk enhance their fats shops for the fast-approaching winter.
Autumn is time for the rut, so bulls are much more targeted on breeding than feeding. Cows, nonetheless, are nonetheless following meals sources. Since bulls are following the cows, it’s essential for hunters to know what meals can be found the place they hunt this time of 12 months, particularly these sugar-rich forbs that turn into elk desserts proper on the peak of searching season.
Winter
With the onset of winter, meals turns into far much less obtainable for elk herds. Winter meals provide is the major issue that limits elk populations. The animals fare finest in winter ranges that include herbaceous vegetation, which can make as much as 84 p.c of their eating regimen in areas with obtainable grasses. Grasses will be arduous for elk to entry in deep snow, nonetheless, so herds will typically hang around on the identical south- and west-facing slopes they frequented within the spring, in addition to wind-swept ridges. These areas are inclined to have shallow, dry soil circumstances that produce higher-quality forage that’s extra palatable and better in protein than areas with deeper soil.
Picture by Danielle Brigida / USFWS
Learn Subsequent: What Do Deer Eat?
Woody browse additionally turns into an vital meals supply for elk throughout chilly months — greater than some other season, and particularly in habitats west of the Continental Divide. Aspen, mountain maple, serviceberry, chokecherry, dogwood, and willow are all most popular elk browse.
The supply of grasses and browse materials is especially vital for mature bulls. The rut is tough on a giant bull’s physique, they usually can lose as a lot as 20 p.c of their physique weight. Wintering away from massive herds, the place predators prefer to lurk, is commonly essential to survival. Generally, this implies a giant bull might find yourself counting on fats reserves because of less-than-ideal foraging conditions. Remoted grassy hillsides, small clearings, and uncovered knobs are locations solitary bulls could possibly discover floor shrub and aspen progress to get them by the winter.
Elk don’t have a single favourite meals, however they do favor sure crops based mostly on their space, the season, and availability. Grasses make up most of their eating regimen (about three-quarters of it) however they do appear to favor flowering crops like clover and dandelions when they’re obtainable.
Though elk are categorised as herbivores, they often stray from their typical eating regimen to eat meat and eggs, in line with the Rocky Mountain Elk Basis. If that’s tough to think about, take a look at this video that reveals a cow elk eating on goslings.
Like their whitetail family members, elk love apples. They’re identified to nibble the tender branches of small apple bushes and gobble the fruit from mature bushes.
Closing Ideas on What Elk Eat
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The reply to the query “What do elk eat?” is sophisticated as a result of it’s so broad. The usual elk eating regimen is extremely various, with every part from grasses to bark on the menu. Grasses might make up the majority of their eating regimen, however as a result of elk are opportunistic feeders, they have a tendency to eat no matter is out there with the altering seasons. They observe the green-up within the spring however shift to woodier areas to browse through the harsh winter months. Understanding how elk feeding habits change all year long can dramatically enhance the chances of punching your elk tag this searching season.