I had the same problem. Scouted in the summer, located at least 4 nice bulls, but came back to find the herds severely spooked and could not locate the bigger boys. The weather didn't help, neither did the litany of people hunting the roads. I did not realize that they had given out a bunch of tags for October 1-7. The total tag count for the Toutle was around 823, that seems really steep to me. It made for a tougher hunt than I expected, but in the end, I was just glad that I did not eat tag soup.
