Planning a successful elk hunt requires a ton of prep work. A lot of hunters focus on the obvious stuff like fitness and gear, but understanding elk feeding habits should be more than just another task on your to-do list. It\u2019s a key to unlocking their daily movements and patterning their behavior. It can be just as important as honing your shooting skills and preseason scouting. Lke whitetails and other ungulates, elk are largely driven by their bellies. By understanding what foods elk eat (and when), you can plan your hunt more strategically and increase your chances of success. So, what do elk eat? Here\u2019s a handy breakdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An Elk\u2019s Diet Is Mostly Vegetation<\/h2>\n
Like their whitetail cousins, elk are herbivores, meaning they spend their days plowing through Mother Nature\u2019s natural salad bar. These hefty critters are both grazers (they eat grass and herbaceous plants like cows) and browsers (which means they eat leaves, shoots, and fruits from shrubs and trees like whitetails).\u00a0<\/p>\n
If we judge what elk love to eat based solely on what they would consume in the most quantity, it would be grass, hands-down. Grasses make up 73 percent of an elk\u2019s diet on average. Elk graze on grass year-round when it\u2019s available, according to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation<\/a>. It doesn\u2019t really matter what kind of grass either. For instance, they consume wheatgrass, bromegrasses, bluegrass, and fescue in abundance. Elk do have a preference for certain forbs like sticky geranium, false dandelion, wild lupine, aster, elk sedge, and shadbush, all of which are documented favorites<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Photo by Alice Jones Webb<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n But just because you eat a lot of something doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s your favorite food. I eat a heckuva lot of rice on a weekly basis, mostly because it\u2019s cheap and readily available. Given the choice between a bowl of rice and a slice of chocolate cake, I\u2019m going with the cake every time. Elk are much the same way.<\/p>\n Elk aren\u2019t limited to feeding in open meadows and grassy fields. Elk also roam in timber and thick brush, browsing on woody vegetation, and when given the chance, elk will absolutely chow down on agricultural crops like corn, soybeans, and alfalfa. Elk also seem to think of clover as their ungulate version of chocolate cake.\u00a0<\/p>\n Elk are large animals and it takes a lot of vegetation to keep their big bodies going. On average, elk must eat about 3 pounds of food<\/a> each day for every 100 pounds of body weight. So for an 800-pound bull, that\u2019s a whopping 24 pounds of grass, forbes, and leaves daily. When you have a whole herd of elk devouring that much vegetation, you begin to realize why farmers get so frustrated<\/a> with elk in their alfalfa.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t![](\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/Eb2NncE2IOs\/hqdefault.jpg\"\/)
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