Thread: tell me about Wapiti

I've been seeing crop damage on the farm here for months, yesterday I found a monster deer. A big shaggy beast looked to be taller than me. It was sitting in the sun against the base of a rock, the compressed grass from it's body was about 1.5m long. I know very little about deer, but this thing was huge, and as there are a few wapiti farms not too far away I suspect this thing could be a feral (ex-farm or escapee) wapiti. No ear tags or marks I could see. Any other deer get this big? It was amongst some of my young trees but there seems to be very little damage to the trees, mostly it seems to have been eating grass.

I didn't get a good look at it, what are the defining characteristics I need to look for? If it is a wapiti, is it good eating?