Well, as JJHack pointed out, you can't always bring elk meat home--even if you hunt in Canada! Though I have never had any problem bringing game meat home across either the Canadian or Mexican borders. Have brought whitetail, mule deer, caribou, elk and moose meat from Canada many times, and deer from Mexico. Have even brought gamebirds back from South America.
You can bring meat back from Africa if it's been cured and sealed, which essentially means commercially packaged biltong (jerky) or canned meat, and not much of either. Though I did smuggle some homemade, unsealed buffalo biltong back inside my hunting boots many years ago, though that was before the general use of "biltong beagles" (or other breeds) in U.S. airports.
If you want to bring home meat from African animals, the place to go is Texas. In fact I do believe Texas was invented to make exotic meat-hunting possible. Yeah, most of the game will be fenced, but not all.
If you mostly want elk meat, there are many ways to go on an relatively inexpensive hunt. But most non-residents want "a decent 6-point" or even bigger, and many don't care about the meat. A very few are mostly interested in the meat on their first hunt, but for others it takes a while to reach that point, usually when there's no more room for elk antlers in their home--which may only take one shoulder-mount.
I don't have much interest in 6-point antlers anymore, and two years ago went hunting for the first legal bull in range. It turned out to be a pretty good 6-point, but I was lucky enough to be hunting on a ranch....
