Elk Research · By Josh Forcier · 7 min read · Updated 2026-09-30
What Smith 2022 Says About Male Elk and Hunting Pressure
A plain-language breakdown of how male elk changed behavior during archery, elk rifle, and deer rifle hunts.
Smith et al. studied GPS-collared male elk at the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range in northeast Oregon during controlled 5-day hunts from 2009 to 2016. The paper is useful because it separates hunting risk by weapon type, target species, and time of day instead of treating pressure as one vague thing.
The short version: daylight pressure matters, rifle-like pressure matters more than archery pressure, non-target hunters still matter, and open roads become a bigger negative when bulls are trying to avoid people.
The strongest response was during daylight
Male elk responded most strongly during diurnal periods when hunters were active. That matters for scouting because legal-light behavior is often the whole problem. A basin can hold elk at night and still be a poor daylight bet if hunters can easily enter, glass, or road-hunt the obvious routes.
For RidgeRead analysis, high-pressure dawn, midday, and dusk should be read as active risk windows. In those settings, prioritize places that let elk stay hidden while still meeting a real need: bedding, cover-to-feed movement, water, rut activity, or escape terrain.
Rifle pressure hit harder than archery pressure
The study found stronger behavioral responses during rifle hunts than archery hunts. That does not mean archery pressure is harmless, but it does support treating rifle-like pressure as a sharper daylight disturbance.
On a map, rifle pressure should push your attention away from open, easy-to-glass country and toward timber, broken terrain, remote drainage heads, and covered sidehill features. Look for places elk can use during daylight while avoiding hunters.
Deer rifle hunters still changed elk behavior
One of the most useful findings is that deer rifle hunts affected male elk even though elk were not the target species. Elk are not reading the regulation book. They are responding to people, shots, roads, vehicles, and repeated disturbance.
That is why non-target rifle pressure belongs in a hunting plan. If deer hunters, bear hunters, bird hunters, woodcutters, or other users are moving through the same access network, elk may still treat the area as risky. The pressure layer is bigger than your tag.
Open roads became a bigger warning sign
Male elk generally avoided open roads during hunting periods, with the study noting more nuance around nocturnal use during the breeding season. The practical takeaway is not that elk never cross roads. It is that daylight POIs beside open roads deserve skepticism when pressure is high.
When you evaluate a point, trace the nearest open road, two-track, trailhead, and easy walking line. A bench 300 yards from an open road is very different from a similar bench behind steep timber, deadfall, or a noisy sidehill approach. Road distance, visibility, and access friction should all affect your confidence.
Canopy cover depended on time of day
The paper reported different canopy-cover behavior by time of day: male elk selected higher canopy cover during diurnal risk but did not use canopy the same way at night. That is a helpful reminder that elk habitat is not static. The same bull can use open or lower-cover country after dark and tuck into heavier cover during legal light.
For high-pressure daylight scouting, timber and canopy should get extra weight when they sit next to useful terrain. A dark patch by itself is not enough. The better candidate is timber attached to a bench, drainage head, saddle, north-facing bedding slope, or covered route that lets elk move without stepping into the obvious open.
The displacement was intense but short-duration
Smith et al. framed hunting risk as a short-duration, high-intensity disturbance. That matches what many hunters see: pressure can rearrange elk quickly, but the pattern may be tied to hunt dates, access routes, and the daily rhythm of people on the landscape.
Use that idea when comparing fresh sign and map predictions. If pressure just started, elk may shift from easy country into nearby security rather than migrating miles away. Look for the closest place that solves the new risk problem: more cover, fewer roads, worse access, lower visibility, and better escape options.
What the study measured
The study followed 38 collared male elk, 50 animal-years of data, at Starkey from 2009 to 2016 through three 5-day hunts with 25 tags each, about 0.32 hunters per square kilometer. From the pre-hunt period to the hunt, movement rates during the two elk hunts rose by 11% to 22%, with the largest increase at night during the elk rifle hunt. In daylight during the rifle hunts, the bulls began selecting forest at about 40% canopy cover, while at night the switch came at about 25%. The hunts lasted 5 days inside a 7,768-hectare fenced enclosure and only 4 collared bulls were harvested, so the study cannot tell you how bulls behave over a multi-week season or which behaviors lead to a bull being taken.
How to use this in RidgeRead
When pressure is low or medium, do not turn every analysis into a rifle-season bunker search. Feed, water, rut movement, thermals, burns, and terrain funnels still matter. The Smith study is most useful when pressure is high or clearly rifle-like during daylight.
When pressure is high, treat open-road adjacency and exposed glassing country as stronger negatives. Give more value to high-canopy cover, timbered benches, drainage heads, and terrain that creates slow, awkward human access. The best POI is still grounded in terrain; the study just helps decide which terrain matters more once hunters enter the system.
Sources and scope
The linked paper reports results for its study animals, location and observation period. The scouting suggestions here are RidgeRead’s interpretation, not field validation of the app or a guarantee of the same behavior elsewhere.