You pay for what you get..
That is true, but did you look at the claims made by the outfitter on his site?
The outfitter's site claims that over the past 4 years they had 80 to 90% success on bulls that were 5x5 or better and the outfitter set the price. The OP claims that nobody who was in camp with him tagged an elk, let alone at least 80% of them tagging 5x5s or better. The outfitter in question seems to have set high expectations that weren't, in this client's experience, close to what was delivered. I would have expected full-time guides, not guides who had dumped me in camp while they hurried off to do the regular day jobs.
I've never hunted elk with a paid guide, only as a guest of landowners who didn't lease their hunting rights and hadn't sold a hunting easement to an outfit like RMEF. The owner offered advice on where to look for elk, good places to glass from, and springs/seeps that didn't appear on my topo maps.
