When mother nature is providing really good groceries, it's hard to bait anything in. One has much better luck when food is limited or of poor quality. Depending on your local conditions, a water trough might be really appealing in the spring and fall.
Elk are smart though, and their decisions in most instances weigh two factors. 1) Security or the risk of predation and 2) food. When times are tough, the need for food can bring them into our back yards and they'll run some risk of predation. The alternative then is starving.
Typically though they view humans as predators, and if those predators run on a clock, they can figure that out too and come in when we are asleep.
Excessive predation risks on the range can also bring deer/elk into urban settings. With the wolves running Yellowstone now, the elk are coming into areas around the large lodges to breed and calve. Large elk concentrations out on the range will attract the wolves that typically won't venture near the lodges. Bear, however, will occasionally come to the lodges to hunt elk.
Our small community now has an urban mule deer population. In late fall and winter the draw is food and they run throughout the entire town at night. Now they are having fawns in our back yards because any coyote that comes to town gets shot. They are doing most of their foraging out in the sagebrush where everything is still green.
