I maxed out my smithing and enchanting so I decided to go hunting for grand souls and since to my knowledge only mammoths have grand souls I went mammoth hunting visiting all the giant camps I knew to have them and after taking out about twenty something of them I can't find any more and I've used up all my filled soul gems creating weapons of mass destruction and armours of total awesomeness. I even went through six full quests before trying to go hunting again but all I find is the bodies of the mammoths I've killed. I don't know if it's a glitch or if mammoths have a fixed number on the map because if so then I'm the reason mammoths are extinct today.

Grateful for any help on the subject cause this is actually weighing on me for some reason.

DON'T TYPE YOUR THREAD TITLE IN ALL-CAPS; IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A CONCEITED dike.

They respawn after a while.

/thread

It's not quite all-caps. What does correcting each other make us look like?

They'll respawn if one stays out of the area for a while.

Someone over in the Mammoth page on UESP said it takes 3 days, but others were talking about them possibly not re-spawning if the area is 'cleared'. Not sure what's going on there, I don't bother mammoths so I've not experienced that myself.

Here's where the discussion's are;

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Mammoth

In order for things to re-spawn you have to stay out of the area for the amount of time it takes for that to happen, or else the re-spawn timer will reset. The amount of time varies for the different types of cells. Waiting over 30 days will usually take care of everything, but stay away from the area. Waiting in your home is usually the best option.

Read this, it gives a bit more detail on re-spawning;

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Respawning

Ten day respawn time. Some giants take a 30 day wait to respawn. Head to the Inn in Winterhold. Grab a mead and do a ten day wait. You'll get your mammoths back. I once leveled alchemy by fast travelling from giant camp to giant camp, mixing brews with giant toes, then waiting ten days before repeating. Toes are smelly!