elk water, ponds vs. creeks
Contributors to this thread:Elk
From: DonVathome
04-Oct-21
I find elk water often in ponds - even dirty, muddy, algae filled nasty ones -when clean clear running creeks are 200 yards away. Have you noticed this? Has anyone notice elk preferring cleaner water?
From: Mark S
04-Oct-21
I’ve observed that too!
From: tinecounter
04-Oct-21
Only hunted Elk a couple of times. But, isn't a Elk wallow akin to a Whitetail scrape with a leaving scent purpose? Clear running creek would eliminate or minimize scent. Just my .02's. More of a question than an answer.
From: LINK
04-Oct-21
“ He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.”
Ungulates, sheep/elk like still water and green meadows. Running water makes it hard to hear predators.
From: Cornpone
04-Oct-21
Killed 7 elk in 10 years hunting over a particular water hole. Muddy, pissed in...they didn't care.
From: drycreek
04-Oct-21
Whitetails prefer a mudhole too, go figure.
From: txhunter58
04-Oct-21
I rented a horse once for a hunt and there was a “babbling brook” about 100 yards from our camp. It was a fairly leisurely stream running thru a meadow with some small pockets of water. We tried for 3 days to get the horse to drink there. Finally gave up and had to take him a mile away to a pond.
From: txhunter58
04-Oct-21
From: StickFlicker
04-Oct-21
Even pronghorns prefer drinking water in a dirt tank, or even overflow on the ground next to a metal drinker, over drinking the clean water directly from the drinker. Maybe the minerals they get, maybe flavor? LINK also makes a ood point that streams cover the sound of danger approaching.
From: DonVathome
04-Oct-21
Glad you guy observed the same thing, I questioned it for years!
From: DonVathome
04-Oct-21
We had no issues getting horses to drink from a loud creek fyi, good theory about noise LINK!
From: elkmtngear
04-Oct-21
Sometimes, the nastier the better. Killed a nice bull out of this hole after he took a drink, while his cows were all swimming in it.
From: greg simon
04-Oct-21
You know what they say. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink...
From: bighorn
04-Oct-21
Don't think animals like ice cold water. My cows would drink water out of the warm water tank than the fresh cold water tank.
From: txhunter58
10-Oct-21
Good thread
