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.

We arrived at the airport bright and early on Monday morning, hopeful that the bad weather had passed and that we would have an airplane waiting on for us. The lady at the front desk told us the plane was in the air on it’s way to us. We unloaded the truck and shuffled our gear through the office to the back porch, anxiously waiting on our plane to arrive. We had our gear weighed, then ourselves weighed, and staged everything so that we could get loaded and on our way as quickly as possible. The plane touched down and taxied right up to our area. The pilot was a young gentleman in his mid twenties, he had a sense of humor about him when we first met. We loaded all our gear and were waiting for the airplane to be refueled, I asked the pilot in passing “How long have you been a bush pilot for”. He nonchalantly replied “oh, I just got my license last week”. Not knowing if he was serious or not I looked at the other guys with an ‘Oh shit’ look thinking the last thing I want to do is be apart of a real life ‘Hatchet’ book scenario. I looked at the pilot and asked him if he was serious and he cracked a wide smile and indicated he’d been flying for as long as he’d been driving a car. I liked the idea of having a pilot with a sense of humor, as long as he could actually fly. We loaded up in the small plane and began to taxi the runway.

Overlooking the town of Salmon, ID

The flight was to take about 50 minutes from take off to touch down on the small gravel runway in the back country. As we left the aircraft climbed up over the mountain and left the valley that Salmon Idaho laid in. The vastness of the wilderness began to sink in. It seemed there were a number of dirt roads dodging in and around the area for the first few miles. As the mountains became steeper and taller those roads became fewer and fewer until I couldn’t see anymore. There were hidden mountain ponds perched high up on the slopped landscape. Steep ravines and massive swaths of  lodge pole pine groves. It was like traveling back in time to a different era.

I was sitting up front with the pilot on our flight out and he had only brought two headsets along so we were able to talk a little bit on the flight. He pointed out road names and other significant landmarks like large peaks and which river’s we were flying over. As we approached our air strip he began to bank the plan for what I thought would be our landing approach, instead he kept turning, doing a complete loop around where he had pointed out the airstrip was. He indicated that the cloud cover was too low in elevation and that he couldn’t land the plane without having a clear view of the airstrip. I was both annoyed at the weather and nervous that we’d now probably have to turn around and head back to the town. He continued on past the airstrip a few miles to reveal another airstrip, one that was on a private ranch in the back country. He said his original plan was to drop us off, head over there and pick up a load of their guys and gear then fly back out. So he got on his radio, called down to the ranch and arranged a plan that involved us being dropped off there for a couple of hours until he could get their guys out and then come back for us. He asked me if that would work for us. I didn’t care where he dropped us off as long as it wasn’t back in the direction we had just come from. So we landed at the ranch and were greeted by a few people in front of some sheds, with all their gear, ready to get back to civilization.

After we unloaded our gear at the ranch and helped load up the next group of people getting onto the plane, the camp wrangler and cook invited us up to the ranch house for some coffee and soup. It was lunch time and we weren’t really interested in pulling our cold weather gear out to sit around outside so we accepted their invitation. The ranch was originally a camp maintained to feed the miners in the area during the late 1800s. I don’t know how anyone in that time period would have survived out there for any length of time, but they did. When the area became designated a national forest the federal government grandfathered the camp, along with a handful of other ones’ in the back country, to continue to be privately owned and operated. The walls were filled with bighorn sheep heads, bear rugs, mountain lion hides, and many more antique trophies from decades past.

Our plane had arrived back at the ranch for us a couple of hours later, faster than I had anticipated. I was kind of wishing we had found a place like the ranch to be based out of. It would be nice to have hot soup and fresh coffee in the coming days. We loaded into the plane for a short 3 minute ride over to our air strip. The valley was wide and sat around 6800′ elevation it seemed to go on for a couple of miles ahead of us as we made our approach. The landing was smooth for being just a gravel road in the middle of no where. We taxied to the end of the runway and unloaded our gear. It was colder than I had thought it would be. Snow covered the ground in a thin layer. The airplane fired up, did an about face on the runway, then the engine roared as the pilot went full throttle sending the small aircraft down the runway as he lifted off and disappeared. That feeling of knowing that if anything went wrong it would be a battle to get out was so surreal. We were officially away from civilization and on our own. I had all my gear unloaded in a pile and I set out to arrange everything the way I wanted it. We had a 7 or 8 mile hike ahead of us to get to where we wanted to set up base camp and nothing is more aggravating than hiking while being uncomfortable. The airstrip featured an outside toilet surrounded by a fence about four and a half feet tall. I found it odd, since I have never seen a toilet open to the elements, in the middle of no where. About 200 yards from the airstrip were 6 small log cabins, owned by the national forest service. As we passed them on our trek out they were all closed up, locked, and the windows were boarded up. It would have been nice if they would have been opened to the public.

We hiked south initially for about a mile on a national forest service trail, it took us east then between two mountains. When we got to the other side of the mountains into the next valley the trail shot north along the west side of the valley. We got clear of the woods and out into the open valley, searching for a place to set up camp. The best place we found was nearby to the creek nestled between some scattered pine trees. There seemed to be a few dead trees in the area that would make good fire wood, we were close enough to the creek that we wouldn’t be traveling very far for fresh water and it was centrally located in the area that we wanted to hunt. Justin was anxious to get out and get some glassing in so we quickly pulled the tent out, set up an area for a fire, and got on our way. We had about 3 hours of daylight left and I wasn’t in a big rush to burn all of my energy, so while the other two guys went north I headed east to the far side of the valley. From the air the grass field in the valley looked like perfect country to walk in, there’s no dead fall trees and it’s just grass so it can’t be difficult to walk through. The reality was that the grass was wet, about 4 feet tall, and thick. It did a good job of masking swampy areas until it was too late and you find yourself in thick soggy mud with no way forward. I began up a small draw filled with bushes bearing red berries, thinking maybe I could get a better vantage point of the area. I came across a massive track in the mud, it certainly was not a deer track, seemed even too small to be an elk track, so I took a picture of it and chalked it up to something I had never seen before. I didn’t know of, or really think about any other large game that would be in the area. I waited until about 30 minutes before dark and headed back to camp, the other guys followed shortly behind me. We finished setting up camp, started a small fire and decided our game plan for the next day.

We started out on a Friday afternoon from Eastern Pennsylvania embarking on our second trip to the west. This time the estimated amount of time it would take was at 36 hours of straight driving. We’d be passing right through the spot we had hunted the year before and continuing on for another 9 hours after that. We crossed the Idaho-Montana line in the early morning hours of Sunday. The plan was to make it to the airport parking lot, get a few hours of shut eye in the truck before loading up in the bush plane and heading out.

Exhausted from the drive, we rolled into town at around 2 am and decided it would be really nice to get a hotel room and at least get a few hours of good sleep before heading out at daylight. We arrived at the airport at 7 am, the office was just opening up. The whole process wasn’t what I had expected. I never flew out of a small airport before, so I had a lot of questions about how things were done. We talked to the office clerk when we first walked in, an elderly woman, who had probably been doing this sort of thing for decades. She let us know they were talking to their other airport on the other side of the back country about 100 miles away. They were bringing a pilot over from McCall to fly us out of Salmon. The local weather channel was up, and she informed us it wasn’t looking good. A storm system was rolling in from the northwest and coming right through the center of the state, “The pilots can’t fly in that type of weather” she said. There was a little hope that it could clear out by afternoon and while we’d be pressed for time, he may be able to get us in before dark. We hung out at the office for most of the morning, pacing around, walking to the deck out back where the pilots load passengers and refuel their planes. On the picnic table out back there was a smaller 6 point bull, the skull wrapped in plastic. I asked the clerk where that bull was taken and she explained it was only a few miles from the air strip we were planning on being dropped off at. There was a private ranch nearby, it’s one of only a few in the back country, they offer horseback hunts and their party that week took the bull. This put our excitement at a whole new level. Just knowing someone had the opportunity on an elk near where we were going had the impatience setting in heavy.

A small mule deer buck roamed around inside the airport fence area so we passed the time by watching him through our binos while he fed on grass at the edges of the nearby buildings. The staff took notice to our incessant pacing around the office area, in and out of the back door, they suggested we go get some lunch and that they would call us if the weather had improved. We headed into town to find a place to eat. It seemed as though there was no shortage of mule deer in the area, groups of does were intertwined throughout neighborhoods and feeding on the sides of the roads. It felt good to be seeing game. We ate lunch, then took a long drive down some back roads, looking for places to explore and to get a better understanding of the terrain we’d be in. We headed back to the airport a few hours later just to be told that it was a not going to happen that day, we should get a hotel for the night and be ready first thing in the morning to leave. We headed back in to town got a room for the night, hopeful that we’d have a plane ready for us in the morning.