I too am have been looking for many years for a cheap hunt with little pressure and good chances of success.
There are many resources available, my experience is that people are much more willing to help if I have done my homework, have a strategy and am asking focused questions.
If I was coming from Texas to a western state to hunt big game, I would likely plan on the first 1-2 years being expensive camping trips where I learn a bunch. I would find someplace that has reasonably easy tags to draw and country I liked to be in and then keep going back to the same place at the same time and learning until I started to get the area figured out. For me, that takes a minimum of 2 years and sometimes I'm a much slower learner unfortunately. My current deer and antelope hotspot took me 6 years to figure out. My other antelope spot I had figured out by the end of the first year, but I pretty much expect a bust the first year I am in a new area. I've been after elk for 10 years now and still don't have a reliable spot, partly because I just keep moving around or end up in areas where the opportunity isn't great.
Elk are a funny thing, there can be thousands of them around but finding them on huntable ground can be incredibly challenging. Even good elk hunters have trouble sometimes moving to a new area as the elk can do crazy things or be in strange places as a result of pressure, food or some other localized condition that people have a hard time seeing like the elk do.
