Elk

Elk, or wapiti (Cervus canadensis), are the second-largest living deer after moose. A typical Yellowstone bull stands about five feet at the shoulder and weighs about 700 pounds. They are a western mountain herd animal with a September bugle, not the woodland deer most Americans mean by “deer.”

Updated on September 7, 2026. Confirm every number on the linked agency page. This is a species profile, not a season proclamation.

Among the world’s deer species, elk sit in the Old World genus Cervus with red deer and sika deer. They are not a giant white-tailed deer and they are not a moose. The side-by-sides that people actually search are deer vs elk, elk vs moose, and red deer vs elk. This page is the encyclopedia those compares point back to.

Elk facts

Numbers in this table wear a source. Size moves with subspecies: a Roosevelt bull on the Olympic Peninsula is not a Tule elk in California’s Central Valley.

Fact	Figure	Source
Scientific name	Cervus canadensis (formerly lumped with red deer as C. elaphus)	NPS Yellowstone, elk (updated Apr. 18, 2025); ASM Mammal Diversity Database
Also called	Wapiti (Shawnee/Cree: “white deer” or “white-rumped deer”). In Europe, “elk” means moose.	NPS Yellowstone
Shoulder height	Yellowstone bulls ~5 ft; cows shorter. Roosevelt bulls to ~5.6 ft.	NPS Yellowstone; NPS Olympic, Roosevelt elk
Weight	Yellowstone bulls ~700 lb, cows ~500 lb, calves ~30 lb at birth. Olympic Roosevelt: cows 600–700 lb, bulls to 1,100 lb.	NPS Yellowstone; NPS Olympic
Antlers (mature bull)	Typical healthy Yellowstone bull: 55–60 in long, just under 6 ft wide, ~30 lb the pair; usually a six-by-six.	NPS Yellowstone
Range	Western mountains and forests of the U.S. and Canada; reintroduced eastern herds; native wapiti also in parts of Central and East Asia.	NatureServe, wapiti
Conservation	IUCN Least Concern. NatureServe cites 1.18–1.22 million individuals in 2021 across 27 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces.	IUCN Cervus canadensis; NatureServe
Colorado 2025 post-hunt	339,370 elk statewide — the largest state herd on a current agency sheet.	Colorado Parks and Wildlife, 2025 elk estimates
Montana 2025 count	157,308 elk counted (agency minimum count, not a modeled total).	Montana FWP, 2025 elk count
Yellowstone	Summer 10,000–20,000 elk from six to seven herds; winter <2,000 inside the park. Greater Yellowstone ~30,000–40,000. Jackson herd ~11,000.	NPS Yellowstone

State-by-state counts belong on elk population by state, not here. Linear measurements and the “horse-sized deer” problem belong on how big is an elk.

How to tell an elk from a moose, a deer, and a red stag

The fastest field checks are size, rump, antlers, and voice. If the animal is horse-high with a dewlap and palmate paddles, stop — that is a moose. The full six-row table is on elk vs moose.

• Size. Yellowstone’s field card is the clean public number: bulls about 700 pounds and about five feet at the shoulder; cows about 500 pounds; calves about 30 pounds at birth. A typical adult white-tailed deer stands 32–40 inches. A six-month elk calf is already in the weight class of a grown whitetail doe. That gap is why deer vs elk exists as its own page.
• Rump and tail. Elk carry a large straw-to-buff rump patch and a short tail. That patch is the “white deer” in the Shawnee word wapiti. A whitetail flags a long, white-underside tail. A mule deer has a rope tail with a black tip on a pale rump, and it often stots.
• Antlers. Bull elk grow branched beams, typically six tines a side on a healthy mature animal. Moose grow palmate paddles. Whitetails grow a single main beam with tines off that beam. Mule deer fork, then fork again.
• Voice. Bulls bugle in September and October — a whistle that breaks into a grunt. Nothing else in North American deer country sounds like it. The clip and the timing live on elk bugle sound. Moose grunt and bellow. Whitetails snort and grunt quietly.

Red deer are the closest living cousin, not a lookalike you meet on a Colorado ridge. They are smaller, darker, and Eurasian. The two can hybridize in captivity and on some game ranches; that mess is a red deer vs elk problem. Do not treat a Yellowstone six-point as a European red stag.

Two naming traps. First, in British and European English, “elk” means moose (Alces alces). North American elk are wapiti. Second, the Ice Age giant with the ten-foot rack is not this animal. That is Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), a different genus, extinct.

Range and habitat

Elk today are a western mountain and forest animal with a few restored eastern pockets. NatureServe’s range note runs from Yukon southeast to Ontario, south to western North Carolina in the restored East, and west to the Pacific, including along the U.S.–Mexico border. Native wapiti also occupy parts of Central and East Asia — Altai, Siberia, Mongolia, northern China — which is why the species is Holarctic, not “American only.” The map in sentences is on where do elk live.

They prefer a mix: grass and forb openings to feed, timber to bed. Yellowstone’s herds use high-elevation grasslands in summer and drop to lower valleys in winter. The northern Yellowstone herd winters along the Lamar and Yellowstone river valleys from Soda Butte toward Gardiner, Montana; most of that herd now spends winter on Custer Gallatin National Forest and private land north of the park. The Jackson Hole herd, about 11,000 animals, is currently larger than the northern Yellowstone herd and winters in part on the National Elk Refuge.

That is not every elk’s life. Roosevelt elk in the Hoh Rain Forest stay put in herds of about 20 cows and calves year-round. Tule elk live in California grassland, oak savanna, and coastal prairie. Manitoban elk use northern Great Plains parkland. Treating “elk country” as one habitat is how people pack the wrong boots.

The 19th century emptied the East. Market hunting, hide hunting, and the ivory trade for elk canine “buglers” — vestigial upper canines used as jewelry — plus settlement, cut the species out of most of the United States east of the Mississippi. An NPS Roosevelt elk article puts the continental crash at an estimated 10 million animals down to fewer than 100,000 by 1907. Mount Olympus National Monument (1909) was created in part as a Roosevelt elk reserve; Olympic National Park followed in 1938. Rocky Mountain elk from remaining western herds were later used to restock former eastern range. Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Arkansas now hold restored herds. Those are real, small, and lottery-managed. They are not a second Rockies.

If you are planning a western public-land deer hunt, elk may share the same forest on a different license. That split is on Colorado deer hunting, Montana deer hunting, and Wyoming deer hunting. Do not pack an elk tag plan onto an Ohio deer opener.

North American subspecies

Six named forms inhabited North America in historical time. Four remain. Genetics keep arguing about how many of those four are full subspecies versus management units, but the field animals are not interchangeable, and parks and state agencies still manage them as distinct.

Rocky Mountain elk (C. c. nelsoni)

The default western elk. Largest antlers of the living North American forms, lighter coat, the animal in Yellowstone, Colorado, and most of the Rockies. This is also the stock used for most eastern reintroductions, which is why a Kentucky elk is genetically a Rocky Mountain elk living on the extinct eastern elk’s former ground.

Roosevelt elk (C. c. roosevelti)

The largest-bodied living form. Olympic National Park: cows 600–700 pounds, bulls to 1,100 pounds. Darker than Rocky Mountain elk, temperate rainforest to montane meadow, from northern California through Oregon and Washington into British Columbia. Named by C. Hart Merriam in 1897 for Theodore Roosevelt. Translocated to Alaska’s Afognak, Kodiak, and Raspberry islands in 1928. Antlers are often thicker and shorter than a big Rocky Mountain six-point; Boone and Crockett and Pope and Young records still favor Rocky Mountain racks.

Tule elk (C. c. nannodes)

California only, and the smallest North American form. Hunted nearly to extinction in the 1870s; a remnant herd near Bakersfield is the source of every living tule elk. Point Reyes National Seashore’s 2023–24 census counted a minimum of 702 animals in three herds (315 at Tomales Point, 188 at Drakes Beach, 199 at Limantour). The Tomales Point enclosure fence came down in December 2024. Statewide, California now holds thousands of tule elk across more than twenty herds — a conservation recovery, not a second Yellowstone.

Manitoban elk (C. c. manitobensis)

Northern Great Plains: southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, plus North Dakota and neighboring prairie. Darker, stocky, a plains and aspen-parkland animal rather than an alpine migrant. Occupies a fraction of its historical range.

Eastern elk and Merriam’s elk — extinct

Eastern elk (C. c. canadensis) lived east of the Mississippi and were gone by the late 1800s. Merriam’s elk (C. c. merriami) occupied the Southwest and parts of Mexico; also extinct. Restored eastern herds are Rocky Mountain stock on that former range. They are not a resurrection of the original subspecies.

Diet by season

Elk are grazers first and browsers second — the reverse of a typical woodland whitetail. Yellowstone lists grasses, sedges, other herbs and shrubs, aspen bark, conifer needles, burned bark, and aquatic plants. Olympic’s rainforest herds add ferns, shrubs, and lichens. The seasonal menu, plant by plant, is on what elk eat. The family-wide wild diet is what do deer eat.

• Spring and summer. Green-up grass and forbs. Cows time calving to this pulse. High summer range in the Rockies is a grocery, not a hiding place.
• Fall. Still mostly grass. Bulls eat less during the rut; they spend the weeks bugling and herding. Body condition going into November is last summer’s work.
• Winter. Snow buries the salad. They shift to dried grass where they can reach it, then woody browse: aspen bark, shrubs, conifer. This is when herds drop in elevation, stack on winter range, and die if the winter is deep and the fat is gone.

They are ruminants. They feed at first and last light, then lie up and chew cud. A Roosevelt elk in the Hoh does not make a 50-mile seasonal move to find that pattern. A Rocky Mountain cow in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem often does. Migration follows snow depth and green-up, not a calendar you can print in March.

Reproduction

The rut runs early September to mid-October. Bulls gather harems — a moving territory of cows and calves — and advertise with the bugle. When another bull answers, they close. Antlers lock, they push, the weaker animal leaves. NPS is clear that fights are loud and exhausting and rarely end in serious injury. The winner is the bull that can hold the cows, not the one that wins a single clash.

A female elk is a cow, not a doe. That vocabulary is on what is a female elk called. Cows are sexually mature at about 16 months; most breed as two-year-olds if nutrition is decent. Young bulls are fertile that early too, but they do not hold harems. Prime breeding bulls are generally five to eleven years old.

Animal Diversity Web puts gestation at 240 to 262 days and the usual result at one calf. Twins occur; they are not the default the way they are in well-fed white-tailed deer. Yellowstone: single calves from May to late June, about 30 pounds at birth, spotted. The cow hides the calf for the first days and weeks. At about two weeks the calf can follow and join a nursery group. Weaning is on the order of two months. Spots fade into the first winter coat.

This is a hiding strategy, not an abandonment. Leave a spotted calf where it is. The human how-to for the smaller deer is on what to do if you find a fawn; the same rule applies to an elk calf in a park meadow. Olympic’s distance rule is 100 feet. Yellowstone’s is 25 yards from elk, and a cow with a May calf will still run you off from farther than that around Mammoth.

Antler cycle

Only bulls grow antlers, with rare documented exceptions. Growth is bone, not horn. It is shed and rebuilt every year.

Yellowstone’s calendar:

• March–April. Hard antlers drop. Testosterone falls; lengthening daylight starts the cast. Most bulls drop in this window.
• Spring–summer. Velvet-covered bone grows. Yearlings get about 90 days of growth and 10–20 inch spikes, sometimes forked. Healthy mature bulls get about 140 days. Roughly 70 percent of that growth happens in the second half of the period, when a mature bull can add about two-thirds of an inch a day.
• Early August. Hormones shift; velvet is scraped off. The bull polishes the rack on shrubs and saplings.
• September–winter. Hard antlers are tools for rank and for the rut. Bulls keep them through winter. An antlered bull settles disputes by wrestling. An antlerless bull uses front hooves, which is more likely to injure someone. Large antlers held longer also mean better access to winter feed.

Age classes, from the same NPS page: yearlings grow spikes; two-year-olds usually have slender four- or five-point antlers; three-year-olds thicken; four and older typically carry six points, adding mass more than points. Eleven- and twelve-year-old bulls often grow the heaviest racks; after that, size generally declines. A six-point is not automatically a trophy of a given age. Nutrition and injury write on the bone. The family overview is deer antlers; velvet timing is velvet shedding.

Predators

A healthy adult elk is not easy food. Calves are. Yellowstone is the cleanest public food-web: elk are the park’s most abundant ungulate, about 85 percent of winter wolf kills, and important prey for bears, mountain lions, and at least 12 scavenger species including bald eagles and coyotes. Bears — grizzly and black — take calves in spring and early summer; several Yellowstone studies put bears, not wolves, as the top summer calf predator. Coyotes and bobcats take calves. Wolves take all ages on winter range.

The elk’s answers are the herd, the open meadow with a view, and speed over a short burst. How fast that burst is belongs on how fast elk run, not as a bumper-sticker number here. They also kick. Olympic’s safety page is blunt: an elk that feels crowded will chase. Give them room. The broader predator list for the family is what eats deer. Wolves as a species, not as an elk footnote, are on wolves.

People now kill more elk than any wild predator does in most of the managed West. That is harvest, not a hunt pamphlet, and it belongs in the next section.

People: hunting, parks, roads, and disease

Elk are a recovered game animal, a park spectacle, and a collision problem, in that order of how most people actually meet them.

Hunting is how western states keep recovered herds from eating winter range down to dirt. Colorado’s 2025 post-hunt estimate was 339,370 elk; the same agency recommended 130,300 elk licenses for 2025 against 719 moose licenses. That ratio is the practical difference between an elk trip you can often calendar and a moose lottery. Montana’s 2025 count sheet tallied 157,308 elk. Harvest and license rules change every year; they live on the state wildlife agency, not on this page. If you are choosing a Rocky Mountain hunt versus a moose tag, use moose vs elk hunting. Named western drainages and access are on best elk hunting locations in the Rocky Mountains. Deer seasons in overlap country stay on the state deer guides linked above. Eastern restored herds — Kentucky is the working example — are a limited draw on former eastern-elk ground; start at Kentucky deer hunting and the state’s elk page, not a Rockies packing list.

In parks, elk are the animal people photograph until they get too close. Yellowstone in September is bugling on the northern range and along the Madison. Olympic’s Hoh herds are year-round. Point Reyes is tule elk on coastal prairie. Stay back. A cow with a calf is not a photo prop.

On roads, mass is the difference between a crumpled fender and a totaled vehicle. Elk are crepuscular and they use rights-of-way. If you hit one, the sequence — safety, reporting, insurance, do not walk up to a wounded animal — is the same checklist as for a deer, on what to do if you hit a deer.

Disease is the long problem. Chronic wasting disease is a prion disease of cervids, fatal, and now in elk, deer, and moose. USGS, as of June 2026, had documented CWD in free-ranging and/or captive cervids in 37 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces. Yellowstone confirmed its first park CWD case in a mule deer buck near Yellowstone Lake in October 2023 and is watching elk. You cannot diagnose CWD from a turnout with certainty. Field signs and testing logic are on CWD deer symptoms. Brucellosis, a livestock bacterium, persists at low prevalence in Greater Yellowstone elk and at higher prevalence on Wyoming feedgrounds; it is a cattle-and-agency problem more than a park-visitor problem, but it is why winter feeding remains a fight. The Madison–Firehole herd inside Yellowstone also deals with high fluoride and silica in water and plants, which wear teeth and shorten lives — typical lifespan there about 13 years, versus about 18 on the northern range. How long elk live in general is on how long do elk live.

Elk compared with other deer

If the question is “is an elk a deer,” yes. If the question is “is this the deer in my headlights east of the plains,” no. Use deer vs elk.

If the animal is palmate-antlered and taller still, use elk vs moose. Hunt tactics and pack-out for those two are on moose vs elk hunting.

If it is a European red stag, or a ranch animal with mixed Cervus blood, use red deer vs elk. Sika are another Cervus cousin; the American overlap with native deer is Maryland marsh, on sika deer vs whitetail, not an elk ridge.

Western deer that share the same mountain as elk are usually mule deer. The tail, the ears, and the stot are on mule deer vs whitetail deer. Elk are not in that comparison because nobody with a clear look mixes a 700-pound six-point with a mule deer. People mix them in the word “deer.”

FAQ

Is an elk a deer?

Yes. Elk are members of the family Cervidae, genus Cervus. They are not the species most North Americans mean by “deer.” That animal is usually a white-tailed deer. Size, rump, and the September bugle are the fastest tells. Full compare: deer vs elk.

What is the difference between an elk and a moose?

Elk are smaller, herd-living meadow grazers with branched antlers. Moose are larger, usually solitary wetland browsers with palmate antlers and a dewlap. In Europe the word “elk” means moose. Full compare: elk vs moose.

How big is an elk?

Yellowstone bulls about 700 pounds and five feet at the shoulder; cows about 500 pounds; calves about 30 pounds at birth. Roosevelt bulls on the Olympic Peninsula can reach 1,100 pounds. Details and the subspecies spread: how big is an elk.

What is a female elk called?

A cow. A male is a bull. A baby is a calf. Not doe, buck, or fawn — those are white-tailed deer words. What is a female elk called.

Where do elk live?

Mostly the western United States and western Canada, plus restored eastern herds and native Asian wapiti. Colorado currently holds the largest U.S. state estimate. Map in sentences: where do elk live. Counts: elk population by state.

Do elk and red deer interbreed?

They can, in captivity and on some game ranches. They do not share a wild North American range, so a free-ranging Yellowstone elk is not a red-deer hybrid. Taxonomy and the ranch problem: red deer vs elk.

Sources

• National Park Service, Yellowstone — Elk (updated April 18, 2025). Size, antlers, rut, herd counts, predators, brucellosis, CWD note.
• National Park Service, Olympic — Roosevelt elk (updated July 3, 2025). Body size, Hoh herds, viewing distance.
• National Park Service, Point Reyes — Tule elk. Tomales Point, Drakes Beach, and Limantour counts.
• Colorado Parks and Wildlife, 2025 post-hunt elk population and sex-ratio estimates.
• Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, 2025 elk count.
• IUCN Red List, Cervus canadensis (Brook et al.). Least Concern.
• NatureServe Explorer, wapiti. Range and 2021 abundance note.
• ASM Mammal Diversity Database, Cervus canadensis. Taxonomy split from C. elaphus.
• Animal Diversity Web, Cervus elaphus (lumped account). Gestation, weaning, vocalizations. ADW still files wapiti under the older name.
• USGS National Wildlife Health Center — expanding distribution of CWD. 37 U.S. states as of June 2026.

Parent hub: deer species. Sibling profiles: white-tailed deer, mule deer, moose, red deer.