[4] Elliot's short-tailed shrew is found in lowland environments with heavy vegetation from southern Iowa and Nebraska in the north to parts of Texas and northern Louisiana in the south, including much of the states of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and the northeastern corner of Colorado.

[2] Two subspecies are currently recognised: The species inhabits a diverse range of habitats, including grasslands, agricultural land, and woodland.

[4] Elliot's short-tailed shrew is generally a solitary, nocturnal animal, spending the day sleeping in burrows in soft soil or leaf litter.

Genetic analysis to determine its precise relationship to other members of the genus has been ambiguous, with some studies placing it as the closest relative to the southern short-tailed shrew,[6] and others showing it as being basal to the other species.

[7] The oldest fossils of the species date from the last Ice Age, and the two subspecies may have diverged as recently as one thousand years ago.