With the 2016 hunting season in the books I began looking for other hunting opportunities out west. I was hooked on finding the next great place to go. As a traveler by nature I like to find new places, explore new experiences, and meet new people. I felt as though our trip to Wyoming wasn’t as challenging as what I had anticipated so I set out to find my next destination. My main goal was to find a place to hunt elk, lets face it, that’s any big game hunter from the East’s dream is to harvest a mature elk. The animal itself is so foreign to me, we have a very small herd of them here in Pennsylvania. While traveling up north I occasionally see one crossing a road or wading through a shallow stream. Compared to the usual whitetail deer they’re just a monstrous animal. Every year I apply for a PA elk tag in hopes of getting an opportunity to hunt an animal expatriated then reintroduced to my home state, and every year I get another bonus point, maybe someday I’ll get the opportunity.

My hunt research was quickly narrowed down to two states, due to the fact that I only started applying for points the year prior. Idaho and Colorado both have over the counter elk tags and plenty of elk. Idaho though, is an opportunity managed state that allows hunters a wide array of species to hunt over a long season with many different weapon options. I settled on a unit in the Frank Church River of No Return wilderness area. Access to much of the unit is by foot, horse, or bush plane. It’s the largest wilderness area in the lower 48, as remote as it gets. With the hunt area decided it was now time to pitch the idea to the guys and see who wanted in. The odds were against us on being successful, as they were with Wyoming. This time though, there’d be no truck, no sleeping trailer, no running to town for a meal or shower. We’d be completely cut off from civilization, in the mountains, on our own. It sounded like a dream come true. I was able to convince Matt and Justin to join in on the fun.

The first step was to pick a specific air strip within the three units that would be open to us for hunting. I called a number of aviation companies in Idaho that fly frequent trips into the back country. Many of them had great advice on where to go and where not to go, what to bring, and what to expect. I settled on McCall Aviation, their rates were good and they offer a package to hunters that they’ll fly your game out if you’re successful. I poured over hunt forums, hiking websites, the Idaho fish and game website, and anything else I could find that would give me any information on the area. We were set to fly in around the first week of October and ready to spend 6 full days of hunting.

In the next post I’ll detail the journey of getting to the back country, the hunt, and making it back out.