2 things I learned when living in Colorado:
1. Pre-scouting is meaningless. Very easy to find elk out of hunting seasons and not so easy during hunting season as in I never ever saw one over the several seasons I hunted there.
2. You cannot learn the density of hunters in pre-season scouting. When you think you found a good accessible hunting area, everyone else who is upright with a pulse found it before you and is waiting for you to arrive.
I never grew up with this type of hunting so it was extremely demoralizing for me, as it taught me in one lesson, the difference between a population of 20 million that largely does not hunt compared to the US.
As a total failure, the best advice I can give is to use any hunters you see as a driving tool to the most inaccessible places you can find. I hunted Aussie deer by seeking out the nastiest of landscape and using ears and eyes instead of feet. The dark timber is the equivalent in elk country. Pockets of shelter, shade and adjacent to feed areas is where I would scour.
John
