By the end of the third night we were cold, tired, and wore out. The prospect of finding anything actually living in the area was bleak. We had decided to pack up our camp and make the 7 mile hike back to the airstrip. Hopefully maybe we’d stumble across a deer or elk track on the way back. The plan was to get to the airstrip and investigate the cabins a little more. On our hike out we hurried past them and didn’t get a look at all of them. I was hoping maybe one of them was unlocked and opened to the public.

We packed all of our gear up and the tent. Each of our packs weighed about 45 to 50 pounds. On the hike back they may have been a little bit lighter due to having less food in them, nonetheless they were still on the heavy side. We winded through the timber between the mountains, all of us looking forward to finding a cabin unlocked and open, with plenty of firewood in the area. The tent at this point was completely soaked as were our clothes.

Justin was leading the group, I followed behind him about 10 yards then Matt was another 20 yards behind me. We were about 200 yards from the small cabins that lay just before the air strip when I heard a howling from something up ahead. My first thought was that we maybe we stumbled upon some wolves milling around the cabins looking for scraps. Justin dropped to a knee, he had the same thought. My gun was strapped to my pack as was his. I came up on his side and un-clipped his gun from his pack and handed it to him. We couldn’t tell where the animal was at, we just heard it howling and yipping in the distance. He raised his gun up to see if he could get a better look. We both spotted it at about the same time. His gun dropped, it was a dog. We weren’t expecting to see a small dog in the back country. A national forest service worker was at the cabins with her dog. She ended up coming out of the cabin to see what her dog, an Australian cattle dog, was barking at.

We made our way up the trail to her. She asked if we had any luck and what we were after. I told her we saw a small bull moose in the next valley over. She immediately knew which one we were talking about, she had been living in the back country all summer clearing trails and doing forestry work, she knew where a lot of the animals were. We told her we were after elk and deer but had no luck finding any. She kind of laughed and said we were in the wrong area for elk and deer. There was a small herd to the north of the airstrip by about 4 miles that she had seen about 2 weeks prior. We guessed that’s where the guys from the private ranch had killed the small 6×6 the week prior. Then she pointed to the south and told us that about 10 miles that way there was another small herd, she only saw cows in that herd, but guessed there were probably a couple of bulls in the area. We thanked her for the information, then asked if any of the cabins were for public use. She told us that if she was staying that night she’d have no problem letting us sleep in the cabins while she was there but she was flying to a nearby airstrip then hiking back to our airstrip. She was assessing bridges through a large forest fire area.

 

Disappointed that we couldn’t get into one of the cabins for a night to get out of the miserable weather and get a good nights sleep, we walked down to the air strip to talk about a game plan. The first order of business was to use the outdoor toilet. The temperatures were frigid and sitting on the seat was not pleasant but I didn’t care I had to go. We gathered around at the airstrip where we had been dropped off 3 days prior. Everyone agreed due to the trouble of getting out to the back country we should call back to the bush plane office and see if they’d be able to come get us Friday evening or Saturday morning. When we got a hold of them they said a bad weather system was coming in and they could either pick us up that afternoon or it would probably Sunday at some point. I told them I’d call them back and let them know what we wanted to do. We decided as a group that we didn’t want to get stuck out there for 3 more days in the snow so we’d let them know to come and get us that afternoon.

Justin and Matt had taken a walk to the end of the runway to blow a few bugles just to see if they would get a response. We had tried this a number of times over the last couple of days with no luck this time was no different. They had just returned back to the runway where I was posted up scanning the surrounding area. To the west at the tree line about a half a mile away we spotted something.  I pulled up my binoculars and saw a person emerging from the treeline on a trail, then a dog, then a second person. They were headed our way. When they got over to us we were curious as to where they had come from since we were in the middle of no where. It was a husband and a wife with their dog on a 14 day backpacking trip from the Western side of the back country to the Eastern side. They were on their 9th day and a little over 80 miles in so far. On their whole trip the only animal they had spotted was a big horn ram while they were pack rafting down the Salmon river at the beginning of their trek. This made us feel a little bit better about leaving, they had just walked the trail up from where the forest service worker had told us there were elk. They stuck around while the first plane landed and dropped them a prearranged package of food then went on their way heading south to cold mountain.

 

Our plane arrived with our original pilot he told us we weren’t the first group to not see a whole lot of game in the area. He said the only person he had heard of getting anything in the back country was a guy solo hunting who had walked 15 miles from one airstrip to kill a bull. Then walked 15 miles to the next air strip four separate times over a number of days to pack the bull out. It was definitely an experience we all grew from and you would definitely need more time to hunt an area as difficult as the back country of Idaho. When we go back we’ll be a little better prepared and hopefully have some luck on the hunting side of it.