Just for the statistics, in Montana the average for a hunter to kill an elk is around 17%. Out of that 17%, around 80% of those guys do it almost every year, so that means that 3.4% of the hunters that just get lucky, actually get an elk. Out of that 3.4% the amount of bulls varies from raghorn, to decent to large. Even then, there isn't a very large % of the 3.4% that actually get a decent to big bull. Tough statistics, but it is real. Las Vegas has about the same odds, but the people keep going to Vegas hoping they will be the next big winner. The lights in Vegas are paid for by the people that hope to strike it rich.
MUCH wisdom here.
I hunted Roosevelt elk on public land in Washington state off and on for a loooong time. I read books about them, asked wildlife biologists and park rangers about them, looked at them in the zoo, scouted hard in the summer, all of the stuff that you're supposed to do. Some years I actually saw an elk during the season, but never anything legal.
When I finally hired an outfitter, I got to spend several days with people who actually knew how to hunt elk. We hunted less than a dozen miles from where I had done my self-guided hunts, and on Opening Morning, I saw more elk than I had in all of my previous elk hunts combined. These guys had grown up in the area, and the hunt was purely fair chase. They were just a lot smarter about how they hunted, and they approached the problem in a completely different way than I ever had. Pretty much everything they did was different, and all six hunters in camp got bulls that year. Based on what I learned hunting with them, I realized that while I'm a pretty good deer hunter, I had no freaking clue about how to hunt elk.
As a result of what I learned, I believe that I could now go out and get an elk on my own around here. So you might think of the cost of a guided hunt as an investment in your future hunting success.
You can read about that hunt here:
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/11892277/1Okie John
