Elk Wapiti
Cervus canadensis
🦌
Chordata
Mammalia
Artiodactyla
Pecora
Cervidae
Cervalces
Cervus canadensis
North America’s great trumpet‑voiced deer. The elk or wapiti is larger than other deer but smaller than a moose, and its haunting bugle echoes through western forests and meadows.
Description
Elk have thick bodies, short tails and long legs. Adult bulls weigh about 600–800 lb (272–363 kg); cows weigh 400–500 lb (181–227 kg) and stand 4.5–5 ft (1.3–1.5 m) at the shoulder. Their coats range from light brown in winter to reddish tan in summer with a buff‑coloured rump; bulls grow large branching antlers each summer and shed them in late winter. Elk are social and live in cow‑calf herds and bachelor bull groups, with harems forming during the autumn rut. Elk occupy open woodlands, meadows and mountains throughout western North America. They graze grasses and forbs in spring and summer and browse shrubs and conifers in winter. As ruminants they regurgitate cud and digest tough plant material in four stomach chambers. Two subspecies in Washington (Roosevelt and Rocky Mountain elk) illustrate adaptations to coastal rainforests and montane shrub‑steppes.
Quick Facts
Max Mass
Shoulder Height
Standing Height
Length
Diet
Trophic Level
600
1.5
2.25
2.5
kg
m
m
m
Mixed Feeder
Herbivores – Browsers
Hunt History
Paleoindian hunters rarely left elk carcasses, but they did use elk antlers. The PNAS review of Plains Paleoindian hunting notes that elk skeletal remains are rare in Early Holocene sites but that elk antlers were fashioned into tools, weapons and ornaments. A recently discovered “Tope Elk” skeleton from Ohio demonstrates that elk inhabited the eastern woodlands around 12 150–11 830 cal BP (10 270 ± 30 to 10 260 ± 30 ^14C yr); this large bull lived contemporaneously with Late Paleoindian peoples and may have been hunted.
1. Tope Elk, Wadsworth, Ohio (12 150–11 830 cal BP) – a nearly complete elk skeleton radiocarbon dated to 10 270 ± 30 and 10 260 ± 30 ^14C yr shows that elk occupied the eastern woodlands during the Terminal Pleistocene.
2. Cranberry Prairie and Lattimer Elk (Ohio, early Holocene) – two other elk skeletons from Mercer and Champaign counties illustrate elk presence in Ohio during the early Holocene.
3. Baker Bluff Cave, Tennessee (14 076–13 013 cal BP) – elk remains dated through associated strata demonstrate the species’ range in the Appalachian region during the late Pleistocene.
Time & Range
Extinction Status
Regionally Extinct
Extinction Date
Temporal Range
Region
10000
BP
Late Pleistocene
Europe
Wiki Link
Fat Analysis
Fatness Profile:
Medium
Fat %
5
Est. Renderable Fat
30
kg
Targeted Organs
Marrow, kidney fat
Adipose Depots
Seasonal backfat, perirenal; marrow
Preferred Cuts
Long-bone marrow
Hunt Difficulty (x/5)
4