The best solution for successful elk hunting is to go 2 years in a row and use what you learned the first year to get your elk the second year...
One of the truest lines posted thus far. I know it is not what you want to hear but you will be a lot more successful long term hunting elk if you go about it learning elk and their patterns in a specific area.
I know that it is not exactly the same with Roosevelts, but my son, who is one of the most consistently successful Roosie hunters, tells new hunters that it will take them five years to get their first Roosevelt bull. He has hunted the same area for over 20 years now, a horribly miserable place few others hunt and that holds few elk but he has it dialed in. The first year he found elk, stalked them, spooked them and followed where they went. The second year he found elk in the same canyon, set up to ambush them if they left by the same route, and almost got one when other hunters spooked them but yet a third party messed up his ambush. But he had been in the right place. Then he filled a branched antler tag for the next 18 years.
I nudged a lone Rocky Mountain bull off of a flat bench on the middle of a roadless mountain side and tracked it for half a mile as it sneaked off up the mountain. Glimpsed it but no shot. Five years later I came back with two partners, put one in the timber to watch the no-trail escape route the bull had taken years before, and then the other two of us still hunted the bench. That time a bull was there and hunting terrain worked. The watching hunter got a shot at the bull as it walked past him within 25 yards.
Hunt hard and expect to tag a bull the first year but learn, learn , learn. Learn terrain, elk body language, exit routes when elk leave a specific spot, vantage points where you can see not only a big patch of ground but where you can see an obscure trail or route maybe up a ridge through timber. Remember. What an elk does in this spot this year another elk is more likely to do if you find one in the same place and circumstance a year later and ten years later.
Re pants and expense: pants take a beating in brush and rocks. This is a repeat but I buy wool and wool blend dress pants from thrift stores as my main hunting pants. They are thin, cool, lightweight, non-binding, shed light water, quiet and if you tear them or get blood on them, toss them without concern for cost.
