Planning a profitable elk hunt requires a ton of prep work. A whole lot of hunters give attention to the plain stuff like health and equipment, however understanding elk feeding habits must be extra than simply one other job in your to-do record. It’s a key to unlocking their day by day actions and patterning their conduct. It may be simply as necessary 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’ll be able to 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 plan Is Principally Vegetation
Like their whitetail cousins, elk are herbivores, that means they spend their days plowing by means of Mom Nature’s pure salad bar. These hefty critters are each grazers (they eat grass and herbaceous vegetation 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 essentially the most amount, it could 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 out there, in accordance with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. It doesn’t actually matter what sort of grass both. As an illustration, they eat wheatgrass, bromegrasses, bluegrass, and fescue in abundance. Elk do have a desire 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 plenty 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 approach.
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 giant animals and it takes plenty of vegetation to maintain their large our bodies going. On common, elk should eat about 3 pounds of food 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 will have a complete herd of elk devouring that a lot vegetation, you start to comprehend why farmers get so frustrated 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)
- Purple 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 the Seasons
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Elk are opportunistic feeders, which implies they adapt their consuming habits to no matter forage is offered and affords essentially the most diet. Modifications in seasons carry shifts in meals sources. Understanding these shifts can assist you find extra elk.
Spring
Spring is the season of awakening, and elk take full benefit of all that contemporary, inexperienced development. After the lean occasions of winter, elk want nutrient-dense meals to replenish vitality and substitute the burden they misplaced through the winter and the rut.
Elk discover early-greening grasses and forbs comparable to clover, dandelion, and Indian ricegrass significantly tasty, and the excessive protein content material of those meals additionally means they’re nutritionally beneficial. South- and west-facing slopes are the primary to inexperienced up in early spring, so these areas are the place elk have a tendency to assemble. The animals will transfer to larger elevations to comply with the wave of recent development, which is able to assist help all their dietary wants, together with help for being pregnant, lactation, and antler development.
Summer season
Summertime is a time of dietary a lot for elk herds. The elk’s summer time eating regimen is usually composed of forbs comparable to dandelion, geranium, asters, and clover. In areas with ample forbs, these herbaceous flowering vegetation could make as much as 100% of an elk’s day by day consumption.
Picture by Alice Jones Webb
Fall
As summer time turns to fall and inexperienced vegetation grow to be a lot more durable to search out, elk shift their eating regimen to include extra browse. Though grass remains to be the primary element of their eating regimen, sure vegetation comparable 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 way more targeted on breeding than feeding. Cows, nevertheless, 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 yr, particularly these sugar-rich forbs that grow to be elk desserts proper on the peak of looking season.
Winter
With the onset of winter, meals turns into far much less out there for elk herds. Winter meals provide is the primary factor that limits elk populations. The animals fare greatest in winter ranges that include herbaceous vegetation, which is able to make as much as 84 p.c of their eating regimen in areas with out there grasses. Grasses might be laborious for elk to entry in deep snow, nevertheless, 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 likely 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 necessary 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 well-liked elk browse.
The provision of grasses and browse materials is especially necessary for mature bulls. The rut is difficult on an enormous bull’s physique, and so they can lose as a lot as 20 percent of their body weight. Wintering away from giant herds, the place predators prefer to lurk, is usually essential to survival. Generally, this implies an enormous bull might find yourself counting on fats reserves as a consequence of less-than-ideal foraging conditions. Remoted grassy hillsides, small clearings, and uncovered knobs are locations solitary bulls might be able to discover floor shrub and aspen development to get them by means of the winter.
Elk don’t have a single favourite meals, however they do choose sure vegetation 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 choose flowering vegetation like clover and dandelions when they’re out there.
Though elk are categorised as herbivores, they often stray from their typical eating regimen to eat meat and eggs, in accordance with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. If that’s troublesome to think about, try this video that reveals a cow elk eating on goslings.
Like their whitetail family members, elk love apples. They’re recognized 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 difficult as a result of it’s so broad. The usual elk eating regimen is extremely assorted, with every little thing 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 an inclination to eat no matter is offered with the altering seasons. They comply with 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 looking season.
