AppleOnMyHead

I did some reading before last years hunt and it was obvious that elk range = whitetail range * 1,569,847. However, I think this plays into my favor. I love the outdoors and, lucky for me, I take after my moms side of the family which is full of marathon runners and endurance athletes. I will spend the first couple days doing more listening, fishing, and moderate exercise because last years trip I had a mild altitude headache for 2 days. After that I will be hardcore scouting until season rolls in. I'm bringing a single burner camp stove that is small enough to fit on my belt and a second tent just big enough for me to sleep in diagonally. I'll spend upto 2 full days away from camp just to scout if need be. My biggest concern is not to spook them. I shot an elk the first couple days into muzzleloading season last year in an area that had every sign I can think of except wallows (there wasn't much water in the area). We tracked the elk almost a mile and found tons of blood, but never could find the elk. However, after the gunshot we never spotted any more elk in the area and now I'm on super caution not to try and spook them. The posts here have been great and helped me formulate a plan. I will scout my meadows I've targeted, one with a creek through it, during the evening and mornings and try to make my movements slow and deliberate with lots of glassing. I do have one other question important to my strategy though.

Whitetails will usually concentrate more on one side of a ridge than another. From what I can gather, it seems elk concetrate more on north facing and east facing ridges. Should I try to stay on the opposite side of the ridge up high and look for crossing points and occasionally glass the other side like I would for whitetails? This sounds logical, but as everyone has stated, elk are not whitetail. I think I've read somewhere that some hunters prefer to travel low and just move to higher elevations to scout, but I can't find that literature and I'm not sure why the author stated the reason for traveling low and only moving up to scout. Maybe elk can spot you easier the higher up you are, I'm not sure. I know scouting whitetails you never want to walk at the very top of the ridge becuase you are easy to spot, but as long as there is some forest floor behind you, you are ok. I want to focus on ridges that I think elk will concentrate on, but I also understand elk will use ridges that face other directions, this is why I plan to move slow and glass every other step.