Hunt Alberta Elk | Elk Hunts | Facts for the Hunter

Hunt Alberta Elk

Rocky Mountain Bulls

To hunt Alberta captivates the imagination of harvesting big game animals like mature Alberta Rocky Mountain bull elk. Just the sight of one of these grand creatures bugling on a misty morning in September or pushing its way through chest-deep snow in November is enough to make some hunters abandon all traces of common sense and go to unimaginable extremes to harvest one of the magnificent beasts. Elk hunting in Alberta is never easy, but the rewards are high. A trophy bull elk hanging on the trophy-room wall is true testament to a hunter's prowess.

Regions

Alberta has a growing population of elk that numbers in the neighborhood of 26,000 animals. They are found predominately along the eastern shadow of the Rocky Mountains in the high basins and foothills, although, in recent years, they have been expanding their range into the boreal forest and parkland regions. It was at one time thought that all of the best bulls in Alberta were found in Banff, Waterton Lakes and Jasper National Parks and they seldom ventured outside the confines of these protected areas into adjacent hunting zones until well after the season closed. In the past few years, however, Alberta hunters have been killing an inordinate amount of big bulls, including a non-typical in 1999 that stretched the tape to over 440 inches. Hunters are crediting this to a number of factors, including several mild winters in a row, better management and more knowledgeable outfitters and hunters. Alberta is peerless when it comes to trophy elk in Canada and few of the western states can come close to matching the average size of these big bulls.

Elk Hunting in Alberta

As with the majority of big game species in Alberta, elk hunting just seems to be getting better and better every year. There are more record book bulls being taken than ever before and there are larger bulls being shot than ever imagined by hunters in this province. The non-typical record was shattered in 1999 and while Clarence Brown's fine 1977, 419 5/8-inch bull still stands at number one for a typical elk in Alberta, there is much speculation that that record will also fall in the next couple years.