Elk require a variety of minerals to sustain life. However, the main mineral requirements are iron and calcium. These minerals are readily available in plants that the elk eat.

One unnatural mineral craving that elk have is salt. Salt blocks put out in spring by farmers for cattle are greedily attached by the salt-starved elk, which also provides high levels of iron. But by fall, the elk have little or no craving for salt.

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One of the great misconceptions about bull elk is that you can force feed an elk high quantities of calcium during his antler growing period and force him to grow much larger antlers than normal.

This is not true. Though an elk needs high calcium levels to grow his antlers, which may comprise upwards to 25 percent of his bone mass, the natural process in his body will reject overloads of ingested calcium and pass the surplus quantities of this mineral from its body.