They will return at some point but even when they leave one basin for another they are still in there home range. They will come back when they are ran out of there other basins or they have ate what they want in the basin they are in. It could be soon or quite a while. I have several places I hunt so I check the other areas first before going back to a basin that didn't have elk in it.
I've had wolves push elk out of an entire basin over night. If so, you go find them again somewhere else. There is no point hunting where the elk are not. Same thing can happen with other hunters in an area, sometimes they blow them out. You better be prepared to move. Interestingly enough, last year the best bugling encounters we had also had active wolf activity with lots of tracks and howling. One night we were working a bull and a couple hours later on the hike back to camp in the dark a wolf was howling right where we had been working the bull earlier. The next morning bulls were bugling in the same area. Just because there are wolves it doesn't mean the elk always pack up and move out.
We were hunting an area a few years ago and we consistently had 4 wolves on our cameras. We were hunting there one day and there were wolves howling and zero elk activity. We hunted around and saw elk sign but they weren't talking. On our way out the wolves had moved off up the basin and we were almost back to the trailhead when we heard a bull bugling below us. He bugled several times as he pushed his cows up the other side of the ravine towards there bedding area.
I think those elk were used to the wolves that had spent the entire summer in the same basin. It looked like two adults and two pups so maybe they weren't as big of a threat as other wolf packs with more adults?
The elk were there the whole time but didn't say anything till they had heard the wolves move off.
That was the only case I can recall where they seemed to intentionally stay in the same basin that wolves were also in.
One other time in that same area I had heard some elk bugles and had been headed up there direction when I heard a wolf howl farther up the drainage and not long after there was a stampede of elk that weren't talking that went down the ravine below me and they didn't come back the rest of that archery season.
I think that for the most part if there are wolves then I will move to another area but wolf pressure is probably like human pressure and if they don't feel too threatened they may stay in the same basin but I wouldn't count on it.
