My advice would be to enjoy a week hunting hard regardless of the outcome: Residents are able to draw tags in these areas more often, these areas get a lot of hunters in archery season, it is my understanding the number of tags has increased for the late rifle seasons, and likely limited scouting opportunities. My teenage son had a tag just south of 9 last year for the late season (transferred from my dad who cashed in his points - a great program, btw). We found it very hard to get more than 1/2 - 3/4 mile from roads/2-tracks. I've always prided myself in getting away from roads - however, that was very difficult to do that where we were hunting. Also the weather was very mild for the most part so it was tough. We watched a two small herds of spikes moving through timber a couple days. Saw one decent bull jump out of a dark timbered coulee after dark on the last day as we were loading the UTV. I live in Montana and our expectations were tempered by being non-residents with limited scouting opportunities outside of my dad previously hunting there 20+ years ago - however, it was a great to have 3 generations of elk hunters (and my brother in law) for a week. I did see on some facebook groups where some nice bulls were taken out of the unit we were hunting so they were in there, but still in the high elevation areas and the dark timber (not surprising).
