Pick a couple of units and go learn them, it will take time but you will figure out how to hunt them if you work hard enough and you can go back year after year and get into elk.
I knew some guys that hunted it regularly back in the 2000's and it was 20k back then. They showed me some film they took of their hunts and it was amazing and they killed several bulls way over 350.
nothing more damaging to the national forest that these north facers. have you seen the hiking trails these people congregate on? they are a total disaster of trash and erosion and run-off from their tears that will eventually change the salinity of the trout streams and threaten the fish...
taxes are horrendous and are guaranteed to rise dramatically in the next decade as people and the tax base flee the state. California would have to be in the bottom 5th percentile of hunting of all the states.
them pot smokin, unbathed, folk song strumin commie hippies i saw all over unit 39 in colorado when i was elk hunting made me want to chop them up into little bitty pieces with a machete.
at some point the states that have wolves will just tell the fed courts what Andrew Jackson did "They have made their ruling now let's see them enforce it"......