When I started elk hunting in the early 70's, you could actually shoot alot of elk from the road. They just stood around. Not many hunters, alot of animals and alot of access. Now I like to hunt wilderness , up to 20 miles a day is fine with me. Animals are relaxed, You do not have every moron who has a bugle driving up the road blowing it.
What they do not understand is ,when an elk comes to the bugle, he is not looking for you. He knows exactly where you are standing. The bang of a truck door and driving down the road does nothing but educate the animals. I do not like the guy who during pre season scouting feels he needs to bugle early to see if he can get an answer. The problem is our state finds it more lucrative to manage the hunters not the resource. Too many places closed down to access, too much vandalism. Basically not enough people with a clue or respect for the property or resource.
Mobility plays a large part for road hunting for a few. I have no problem with them ,just respect other hunters.
This year I took a yung hunter on his first muzzy elk hunt. I stopped at the end of an old grassy road. We sat for about a half an hour. Quietly got out and I blew my bugle into the dark stand of timber. We got an answer right away. As we were making our plan a pickup came down the road. We stood quietly waiting for him to leave. As he started to leave the bull had come a lot closer and bugled. The guy put on his brakes and started to back up. I ran down the road 100 yds or so and asked him to keep going and said we ahve a bull we are going to work. He grabbed his muzzel loader and asked "where is he".
I told him to keep going and he started to get out of his truck. I was very direct in my next statement. In fact I cannot repeat it on this forum. He laughed ,went down the road a couple of hundred yds ,got out and started bugling. We slipped into the timber. The bull immediately left. He was out of the game, he could not bugle at all and had no idea what to do next. We went aboput 4-500 yds quietly and I called the bull into 10 yds and we killed it. A classic example of no respect.