Thats a hard one to say, if your friends haven't seen a elk in 2 years it could be the area is in fact not good for elk. Or on the other handyour friends are not good(suck) at finding elk. Either way I sure I would not want to put up the money to go out of state and hunt with them. To be successful with elk hunting,you have to first know where the elkare, meaninga general area down to a couple of hundred yards that you can pin point on a map, then you can hunt them from there.Do your friendschase them with bows or rifles?