Planning a profitable elk hunt requires a ton of prep work. Lots of hunters concentrate on the apparent stuff like health and equipment, however understanding elk feeding habits must be extra than simply one other activity 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 essential 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 Weight loss plan Is Principally Vegetation
Like their whitetail cousins, elk are herbivores, that means they spend their days plowing by way of Mom Nature’s pure salad bar. These hefty critters are each grazers (they eat grass and herbaceous crops like cows) and browsers (which suggests they eat leaves, shoots, and fruits from shrubs and timber like whitetails).
If we choose what elk like to eat primarily based solely on what they’d eat in probably the most amount, it could be grass, hands-down. Grasses make up 73 % of an elk’s weight loss program on common. Elk graze on grass year-round when it’s out there, in response to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. It doesn’t actually matter what sort of grass both. For 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.
Photograph by Alice Jones Webb
However simply since you eat a whole lot of one thing doesn’t imply it’s your favourite meals. I eat a heckuva lot of rice on a weekly foundation, principally 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 method.
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 a whole lot 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 could have a complete herd of elk devouring that a lot vegetation, you start to understand 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 Bushes and Shrubs
- Saskatoon serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia)
- Crimson 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 Via the Seasons
Photograph by Tom / Adobe Inventory
Elk are opportunistic feeders, which suggests they adapt their consuming habits to no matter forage is on the market and affords probably the most vitamin. Modifications in seasons deliver shifts in meals sources. Understanding these shifts will help you find extra elk.
Spring
Spring is the season of awakening, and elk take full benefit of all that recent, inexperienced development. After the lean occasions of winter, elk want nutrient-dense meals to replenish vitality and exchange the burden they misplaced in the course of the winter and the rut.
Elk discover early-greening grasses and forbs resembling clover, dandelion, and Indian ricegrass notably tasty, and the excessive protein content material of those meals additionally means they’re nutritionally worthwhile. 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 greater elevations to comply with the wave of recent development, which is able to assist assist all their dietary wants, together with assist for being pregnant, lactation, and antler development.
Summer season
Summertime is a time of dietary loads for elk herds. The elk’s summer season weight loss program is usually composed of forbs resembling 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.
Photograph by Alice Jones Webb
Fall
As summer season turns to fall and inexperienced crops turn out to be a lot tougher to search out, elk shift their weight loss program to include extra browse. Though grass remains to be the primary part of their weight loss program, sure crops resembling 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 centered 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 turn out 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 comprise herbaceous vegetation, which is able to make as much as 84 % of their weight loss program in areas with out there grasses. Grasses might be arduous 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 situations that produce higher-quality forage that’s extra palatable and better in protein than areas with deeper soil.
Photograph by Danielle Brigida / USFWS
Learn Subsequent: What Do Deer Eat?
Woody browse additionally turns into an essential meals supply for elk throughout chilly months — greater than every 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 provision of grasses and browse materials is especially essential for mature bulls. The rut is tough on a giant bull’s physique, and so they can lose as a lot as 20 percent of their body weight. Wintering away from massive herds, the place predators prefer to lurk, is usually essential to survival. Typically, this implies a giant bull might find yourself counting on fats reserves attributable to less-than-ideal foraging conditions. Remoted grassy hillsides, small clearings, and uncovered knobs are locations solitary bulls could possibly discover floor shrub and aspen development to get them by way of the winter.
Elk don’t have a single favourite meals, however they do want sure crops primarily based on their space, the season, and availability. Grasses make up most of their weight loss program (about three-quarters of it) however they do appear to want flowering crops like clover and dandelions when they’re out there.
Though elk are labeled as herbivores, they often stray from their typical weight loss program to eat meat and eggs, in response to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. If that’s troublesome to think about, try this video that exhibits a cow elk eating on goslings.
Like their whitetail relations, elk love apples. They’re recognized to nibble the tender branches of small apple timber and gobble the fruit from mature timber.
Remaining Ideas on What Elk Eat
Photograph by Amelie / Adobe Inventory
The reply to the query “What do elk eat?” is difficult as a result of it’s so broad. The usual elk weight loss program is extremely diversified, with all the pieces from grasses to bark on the menu. Grasses might make up the majority of their weight loss program, however as a result of elk are opportunistic feeders, they have an inclination to eat no matter is on the market with the altering seasons. They comply with the green-up within the spring however shift to woodier areas to browse in the course of 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.
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