The best way to learn what kind of places elk like to lie down in is to simply get in there. If you’re learning (not hunting) it’s not wasted time to follow old or new tracks and see where they bedded down. When hunting don’t rely on old tracks. Elk have long legs and move easily through timber - it surprises guys that sometimes the feeding and bedding spots are a mile or more apart, and sometimes they hardly move at all. Elk are creatures of habit and travel routes used this year between areas are the same every year.
North facing drainages that have fingers of trees with relatively small cool, damp and heavily timbered bottoms are my go to simply because they are easy to figure out. Elk bed down low and work their way up the edges of the fingers at night. Glassing the dirt on both sides of big fingers I’ve seen elk tracks going in one side and not coming out the other - that’s a good opportunity to go in after them. Yeah, I glass dirt. lol
North facing timbered slopes with large cool benches midway up are another high probability area.
I look at some of the lightly timbered areas in Colorado with ridge after ridge of very uniform timber and no real obvious benches or cool bottoms and I’d have a hard time.
You hunt the cards you’re given not the cards you want, so if an area doesn’t make sense keep moving in the coolest areas and don’t slow down to a snails pace until steaming poop shows up. If you keep bumping elk that are out of range slow down a bit. It’s a skill to know how close you are, so use ears, nose, eyes. You may have tracks that make it obvious, or they may enter and leave from a different direction than you have to hunt.
