Leftylock,......here's my take on it, for what it's worth. True, what you said about the wilderness and folks having trouble at times finding elk. But put it into perspective that the wilderness areas are usually huge ass places, and the number of hunters by percentage is a very small one, thus allowing the animals to easily avoid human contact most of the time. Just two weeks ago in the Gila.....Acon and I had trouble finding elk initially and we were 12 miles in and pretty much all alone. We soon discovered that the elk were no where near the established horse trails and in fact never saw one track in a trail the whole week. But if you were willing to scale straight up for close to an hour and reach one of the mesa's only accessible by foot, you found yourself in the mist of herds of elk acting like wild elk, rather than running for their lives and becoming mostly nocturnal as many near roads have learned to do.
There is much to be said by the saying that 90% of the elk are found in 10% of the habitat. It may all look the same,.....but it doesn't take long out there to figure out the elk do prefer certain areas in every habitat. Don't ever think that elk and deer don't have what they need to prosper in the backcountry just because of those that, by circumstance, find themselves taking advantage of an easy meal in a farmer's alfalfa field. There are no alfalfa fields in the wilderness, yet the bulls grow to over 400 inches and are consistently an impressive herd. Though finding them can sometimes resemble looking for a needle in a haystack, ......it is because the larger wilderness areas are so vast, but one of the key ingredients to both animal numbers and also their size is their survival. Animals in the backcountry have a great opportunity to age and reach their full potential. Comparatively, animals near roads could be said to run the gauntlet each year. I think it is a safe bet that the average age of bucks and bulls 10 miles or more in the wilderness would be greater than that of bucks and bulls within a couple of miles from a roadway. Add in the hunting pressure being considerably higher near roadways than in the backcountry, even factoring in other horsemen and guides, and that equates to hunting animals less pressured and more huntable.........the choice becomes a clear one for me. With the rare exception of an overlooked "honeyhole" near a road, you will always find me planning a hunt away from the hunter numbers and back in the natural settings of the backcountry. Time and resources are too valuable to waste them on less for me. True, there are some great bucks and bulls harvested near roads every year, but I attribute that to the fact that the number of hunters per area is so much greater and there are just a vast majority of animals harvested in such ares because of it that you will inevitable get some reall good ones. But factor in all the dinks and raghorns that fall there as well and I would imagine the odds of finding your trophy standing near the road would drop dramatically.....Just my .02....
DS
.......the damage is most assuredly being done.....
