Best value for the dollar game animals and regions to hunt?

Considering prices are all over the place, a bit of math: Let's say one wants to hunt bull elk in the west somewhere. Call it $10k for everything (travel, tag, guide fee, etc.). Might be more, less, fine, but just a number.
  • Africa safari: Plains animals, what, roughly $5k for 6? Airfare: $1500ish. Shipping all the animals back (excludes taxidermy, just shipping),$1500ish? Total, roughly $8k+/-. Success rate is 100% or something very high.
  • New Zealand (I have hunted stag, chamois, and tahr there a while back): airfare, hunt, etc. north of $10k anymore. Again, very high success rate.
    • Side note: New Zealand has elk as well as red deer.
  • Hunting "back east" in the USA: Tags are cheap, but where does one actually hunt AND have a lot of success? Most land is private (limited public land), I would think one would have to factor in access costs (lease, trespass fees, whatever) to get a total. I am curious what the success rate (animal harvest) would be for a non-resident hunting public land during general seasons. I honestly don't know. I suspect it would be pretty low for the first few years anyway. That rate would probably go up with the right opportunity on private land/lease.
I agree with @wytx that late season cow elk hunts, public land DIY are probably the best value out there for meat hunts. Tags aren't the easiest to get, but decent value prop, and very high success rates. For trophy hunting, wow, value is in the eye of the beholder. Big bull elk in Utah? Bongo in Cameroon? New Zealand Red Stag?
There are a lot of deer in the Midwest. Good bucks run around on every piece of public I hunt in my home state of Indiana. If a guy has good woodsmanship, some grit, and about a week on their hands they can get on some 120+ inch deer. Closing the deal is a different story, but fun can be had.

Depending on the region of the state there can either be very minimal public land or the majority of the county. Southern half of state is full of state and national forests. Big timber hill country.

Looks like non res tag is $240.
 
Im having an extremely hard time wrapping my head around flying for a guided trip to africa, new zealand, etc even being mentioned in the context of “best value for the dollar” hunt. I would have said the answer was hands-down a diy public land hunt in one of the many states with non-resident otc tags around $100 or less, many of which have large national and state forests measuring in the 10,000’s to millions of acres, combined with over-abundant WT deer herds.

Am I completely misinterpreting the original question?
 
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