You’ve got questions. We’ve got answers—and if we don’t, we make ’em up. Every day fellow MeatEaters send us more than 100 emails and direct messages. Some are excellent questions, and we have to think real hard (or get real creative) to answer them. So, we decided to publish a series of our favorite FAQs. We’re here to help you become better hunters, anglers, cooks, and conservationists, so talk to us, ask us anything, and let us know what...

The elk’s long legs and outsized lungs seem to compel it to travel almost constantly, and a hunter’s desire for elk meat seems to compel him to follow. No matter where or how an elk hunter is hunting, he or she is almost surely going to end up using some aspect of the spot and stalk strategy.
Thanks to their size and two-tone appearance, tan body, chocolate mane, elk can be much easier to spot at long distances than other mountain game. When...

Elk are movers. Be it from hunting pressure or weather, great numbers of them will cover great distances with mind boggling speed. But an elk’s toughness goes beyond its ability to climb thousand-feet inclines in times measured in seconds rather than minutes.
When hunters hear these massive animals coming through a forest of lodgepole pine, they often draw comparisons to the sound of trains. And there’s no other animal, save perhaps moose, that...

While we now regard elk as a Western species found primarily in the Rocky Mountains, at the time of European contact they were found across virtually all of the lower-48, with particularly impressive herds on the Great Plains.
Habitat loss and commercial hunting almost wiped the species from the map, though modern conservation practices have led to a dramatic rebound of the animals. Every year, elk make their way on to new lands where they’ve...