Head to head
Elk vs Moose
This comparison has a language problem baked in. In North America, elk and moose are two different animals. In Europe, the word elk means the animal North Americans call a moose, and the North American elk is known instead as the wapiti. This page uses the North American sense, so here elk means the wapiti, Cervus canadensis, and moose means Alces alces.
| Elk | Moose | |
|---|---|---|
| This page uses | Elk in the North American sense, the wapiti | Moose, Alces alces |
| In Europe it is called | Wapiti or, loosely, red deer relatives | Elk |
| Size | Bulls about 320 to 500 kg | Bulls about 400 to 700 kg, the largest deer |
| Antler shape | A sweeping beam with rounded tines | Broad, flat, palm-shaped with edge points |
| Nose and throat | Ordinary deer muzzle, no bell | Long overhanging muzzle, dangling throat bell |
| Company | Lives in herds | Usually solitary |
| Habitat | Open forest, foothills, mountain meadow | Boggy northern forest and willow thickets |
| Rut call | A high, whistling bugle | Deep grunts and moans |
Elk vs Moose: common questions
Why do elk and moose get their names mixed up?
It goes back to European settlers naming North American animals. In Europe, elk had long meant the huge, palmate-antlered deer of the northern forests, Alces alces. When Europeans reached North America they met that same species and, in North America, ended up calling it the moose, from a word in an Algonquian language. They then applied the now-spare word elk to a different large deer they found, Cervus canadensis, which is actually a close relative of the European red deer. So today a European talking about an elk means the animal a North American calls a moose, and a North American elk is a separate species that Europeans would call a wapiti. To avoid the confusion entirely, many biologists use wapiti for Cervus canadensis.
Which is bigger, an elk or a moose?
The moose, clearly. It is the largest living deer by a wide margin. A mature bull moose weighs roughly 400 to 700 kg and stands about 1.8 to 2.1 m at the shoulder, tall enough to look over a car, with the largest Alaskan and eastern Siberian animals at the top of that range. A bull elk, or wapiti, weighs about 320 to 500 kg and stands around 1.5 m at the shoulder, making it a very large deer but noticeably shorter and lighter than a moose. Females of both species are smaller than the males. The moose also looks bigger than the weight gap alone suggests because of its long legs, high shoulder hump, and heavy head.
How do you tell an elk and a moose apart in the field?
Body colour and shape are the quickest cues. A moose is very dark brown, almost black at a distance, with long pale legs, a pronounced shoulder hump, a big drooping nose, and often a flap of skin swinging under its throat. An elk is much lighter, tan or straw-coloured on the body with a distinctly darker brown neck and a large creamy rump patch that shows clearly from behind. Antlers settle it if the animal is a bull: a moose carries broad flattened palms with points around the edge, held out to the sides, while an elk carries a pair of long curved beams with several separate tined points, swept back over the shoulders. Company is a final clue, since elk are usually in a herd and a moose is usually alone.