While stopped at the ranch the previous day we had met with about 6 guys who were finishing out there week long hunt. They were guys from all over the country, life long friends who were scattered by life and reunited once a year for a week long horseback hunting trip in the Idaho back country. They told us they had been coming to the camp for more than 20 years and had seen the good and bad days of the area. They claimed that up until a few years prior to this season the wolves had not quite made it this far into the back country and the hunting was nothing short of amazing. As the wolves moved in and became established it was a different story. They had hunted 7 hard days traveling over 100 miles on horseback throughout the trails surrounding the ranch and were only able to kill one small 6×6 between the whole group. One guy said the wolves have killed all the game in the area including the beavers. The moose they once frequently saw were no where to be seen for years. This conversation was weighing on us pretty heavily on our hike out and it only intensified with the lack of animal tracks in the snow and just in general the absence of game sign.  We spent a few hours out the previous afternoon and I was the only one to come across one lonely track in the mud of something large, yet to be identified.

We woke up with the sun that first morning, it was a pretty sleepless night for us all. We had a MSR 3 man tent to sleep in and we were 3 full grown men. A good rule of thumb for tents is always subtract 1 person from the advertised capacity of a tent and you’ll be fairly comfortable. We were sandwiched pretty tight and two out of the three of us are heavy snorers, myself being one of the guilty parties. Between people waking up and pushing other people so they stop snoring, the condensation rolling off the inside of the tent and dripping down onto us, and just in general the utter coldness we were not anticipating for the first week of October. Needless to say it was a rough first morning getting started. We had planned to set off north on a NFS trail. The trail itself was a 14 mile stretch that links up to another trail. We had decided that rather than strike off on our path it was easier to hike on one that’s already established. We started a quick fire, got some breakfast and coffee in us while our boots thawed out after freezing over night and set off.

When hiking I like to adopt the military method of hiking for about 50 minutes to an hour then take a 10 minute breather/water break. I feel it helps extend your stamina and allows you to make any gear adjustments. It works out well so that’s what we tried to stick to. On our first break we had made it about two and a half miles north on mostly flat clear trail up the valley. We had just navigated across a pretty wide creek over a rudimentary log bridge without anyone going for a freezing cold swim. The trail ahead was a steeper hill so we had decided to take our break in anticipation for the sucking that was about to come.

Matt was standing out in the open with his fly down taking a leak when he spotted something coming our way. It always seems to work out that way, something magically appears when someone in the group is busy with their fly down or their pants around their ankles squatted over a log. When he got our attention I immediately saw what he was excited about. At first glance my brain told me it was a wild horse trotting through the remote valley we were sitting in. I had never seen a moose in person before and I guess your brain automatically registers the next closest thing that it knows. It was a small bull moose closing in our position at a steady trot. He got to within about a hundred yards and I felt the wind shift to the back of my neck. He stopped dead in his tracks, nose to the air. The bull couldn’t quite figure out where we were but he knew something was amiss. After about 20 seconds of standing there scanning the area around us he darted off toward the direction we had just come from. I expected to hear him crashing through the pine trees like a bulldozer, hoping maybe we’d get a glimpse of him again. I’ve never seen an animal so large in the wild and he moved in absolute silence through the trees. It was really unbelievable and that was the point that I had realized what the track was I had seen the evening before.

We continued up the hill ahead of us for several hundred yards until we reached the summit. The trail landscape had changed from pine trees into a boulder field with an incredible view of a mountainside. We took the opportunity to sit and glass the area. We all had bear, lion, and wolf tags in our pocket as well as deer and elk so the odds were high that if anything showed itself on the hill ahead we’d be clear to take it. We scoured every inch we could see and not a single one of us could see anything moving. It was as if this country was too remote even for the animals. We continued on our way down the trail through some more flat open terrain next to a creek again. The map showed an area ahead of what looked to be where three valleys met. There was a large flat area at the base of the mountains and we were headed up one of the valleys. As we got closer we realized we’d have to cross the creek at some point if we wanted to be over in the more open area. At this point the ground beneath us was getting softer and the creek appeared to be getting wider. We started across trying to stay up on drier land rather than the mud. We got to a point where I had realized what we stumbled upon. It was a massive beaver dam. One that was still active as there were fresh cut limbs in the area. The brush was so overgrown around beaver pond it was hard to see at first. We skirted around the front side of the dam, trying to stay as dry as possible. It was getting close to lunch time so we set up in an area over looking the large field while we broke out our food.

After lunch we had decided to start hiking up the mountain across from us, there were a few open areas that looked to provide good glassing points and it didn’t seem too steep. The topo map on the my phone showed what looked to be a couple of flat benches after we crested the first hill. We got to the top of the first hill and I think everyone in the group was feeling a little tired at that point but the next bench looked to be a little nicer of a vantage point so we continued on pushing at a snails pace to get to the top. An area opened up and I had decided I had went far enough, I wanted to just sit and watch the hillside across from us. Matt and I were close by, Justin was a couple hundred yards ahead of us set up looking out over the valley. The pines were so thick on the hill side directly across from us it seemed like it would be nearly impossible to see an animal walking through the woods.

Justin had taken off ahead of us, he was visibly frustrated at the lack of game in the area. We set out at a slower pace, taking in the scenery and hoping to come across anything out in the wilderness, at this point we were all pretty discouraged at our success of even being able to see live animals. As we cut our way through the thick brush following the creek back to the main trail it was evident that we were walking through moose territory. We were now in the area that the moose we had seen came through. He had tracks all up and down the creek banks and the ends of the shrubs were chewed down. It was at least entertaining to see how much one of those animals gets around. We made it back to camp about an hour before dark and Justin was no where to be found. Knowing that he’s a perfectly capable woodsman neither one of us were too worried, we had figured he probably took an alternate path or stopped in an area to glass. Matt and I started gathering fire wood and filling up the water bladders. I had brought a number of 2 liter water bladders and a gravity filter so we’d have plenty of fresh clean water. Someone had brought a saw so it would be easier to break down the dead fall trees into manageable pieces. We weren’t used to such a hot and fast burning wood. It seemed like you could go through two whole trees in just a few hours of burning in the evening.

Justin soon returned at dark, he had climbed to the top of a nearby ridge and sat until just before dark to see if any animals would come out as the sun set. No such luck. We ate our mountain house meals, relaxed our feet, hung some clothes over the fire to dry and laid down for the night.