Well, it sounds like you were with some experienced folks and went in far enough to evade the majority of hunters. What season did you hunt? In either March or May, I don't remember which month, the CDOW will publish the results of their hunter survey. It has stats for all seasons and all areas. If you compare the kill percentages for 2008 to 2007 and 2006 and there is a big difference with a lower percentage for that area, then I would agree on a big winter kill. If the numbers are about the same, then I would think that they just were not in the area you guys were. I'm also wondering how much pressure they had there during archery season.

On a side note, I went with a friend during Muzzle loading season who had a left over tag for an undesirable area. I didn't even have a tag so my ML stayed at home. We went everywhere that seemed logical and didn't see many tracks or eveidence. After 4 days of climbing and looking in all the hard to get places we decided to look lower and closer to the roads. Now this is in a area with tons of weekend recreation use for 4 wheelers and dirt bikes.

Within a halfa mile from the main road we found a bottom that had notbeen hunted,hidden from sight, and thick. They had a huge wallow and tracks all over the place(most was a few days old). We hunted in there for 4 days and saw one cow but it was too dark for my buddy to shoot.We would go there and their were fresh track on top of our boot tracks from the day before.Drove us nuts. They were oviously feeding at night with the full moon we had. Those animals were pros at evading people and didn't act like elk normally do. It was definitly a learning experience.