Alright, thanks for all the help, I'm just trying to find out some stuff from you guys firsthand to try to convince my family members that doing an elk hunt isn't impossible. My uncle uncle is a bit reluctant as far as leaving a familiar place and working very hard to find time to do this kind of thing, which neither he nor I nor any of our hunting buddies know anything about, or if it'll be worthwhile from the perspective that this will cost lots of money.

I suppose that if one's planning a DIY, they must have commitment to sacrificing resources to do it, but I don't think anyone in my family has that for know, since, well, we haven't said to ourselves, "We are going to have to do an elk hunt someday.", In fact, I was talking to my uncle about hunting in the West for elk, and he asked me how do people get the money for it, and so I mentioned how one of you guys saved up tax returns for 2 or more years, and that helped, and he apparently thought that that would be too much trouble, and he promptly responded, "I would just rather hunt here."

That greatly troubles me, since he is my hunting mentor, and I seem to have more ambition than he does, and if he doesn't want to do it, there's nothing I can do. I do believe if I could show him that a hunt costs less than $2,000, I could convince him. I was telling him how a member here went to hunt black bear in Alaska, and he did it for less than $2,000 a person, and he got real interested, but, it was black bear, and we have those here in TN.

I don't want to hunt elk until I first shoot a deer, I haven't yet, I killed a turkey this spring, if I have been arrogant, being a know-it-all, I apologize, I have no right to be. I missed a doe at 250 yards in January, and I feel bad about that, because I actually wounded it, hitting it low.
Since then, I was able to practice a lot with my gun, (.308), and I am confident I could kill that deer if the shot was given to me again.
The reason I missed the deer was, I didn't compensate for the bullet drop.
The guy who was with me told me to put the crosshairs on the doe's back, and I didn't listen.....The rest is history. I will not give up, I am determined to become a good, ethical, successful hunter, who isn't intimidated from the distance of things, etc. I just have to learn, and I am learning, as I hunted twice turkeys, and tagged one, and I am going to hunt this fall for TN riverbottom whitetail.

I don't know what to tell you my situation is, but there's the story.