Well this write-up is long overdue but I'm just getting around to it... It's been nice to relive the hunt through it and I hope you enjoy having a story to read during the off season.
I don't recall the first time I heard about the Frank Church Wilderness but I do remember what put it on my radar as a place I wanted to explore and hunt. I believe it was Ryan Callaghan talking about the value of remote wilderness areas on a podcast, probably Meateater or something similar. He spoke of "The Bob" (The Bob Marshall Wilderness) and "The Frank" (The Frank Church Wilderness) with a reverence that made me pay attention. It wasn't that these places had the most amazing hunting that was interesting to me, it was the wildness of them. They are some of the most remote places in the lower 48, and are truly places where you can go and expect to not see another person if you leave the vicinity of the airstrips. I have Drew (@Truduct) to thank for making this hunt happen. We had been sharing information and talking about doing a hunt together. He asked me where I wanted to go and I told him The Frank was a bucket list hunt for me. It was just something I had in my head that I wanted to do at some point. He did the research and really got the the momentum going to make this hunt a reality.
For those that think they may want to do this in the future, just know that your goal should be an adventure hunt with the opportunity to maybe take some game. This is not a hunt that you will see a lot of animals on. They are there, but they are spread out over a huge area during the warmer months. There are a couple roads that give you access to the periphery of the wilderness area but if you want to get into the interior of the wilderness you need to book a flight with one of the local flight services that will fly you in on a small bush plane. We flew from McCall and it was approximately 60 miles, 85% of which was flying over trackless wilderness.
THE FRANK
Early in the planning we were trying to decide whether to hunt the earlier elk tag in September or the later tag that starts in October. We originally decided on the early tag, not wanting to interfere with other hunts in October and hoping for some rut action. Luckily, our decision was vetoed when we failed to buy the early tags before the non-resident quota filled. This turned out to be a blessing as the early season was hot, dry and very smokey from wildfires across the west. Reports from the area in September were that the rut was non-existent. We were pleased as the temperatures continued to drop as our hunt approached. Our hunting party included myself and Drew, Darryl (@Lungpopper) and his good friend Vic. On September 29 we all met at Drew's house at around 3 AM and were driving shortly thereafter. We took turns driving and blasted to McCall in one big 17 hour push. We got a meal at a local restaurant and then crashed at a hotel that night. The next morning we were up early for breakfast and got to the airport before 8 for our flight in. Excitement was high as we loaded the plane and prepared to fly. The 206 is the workhorse in that area for commercial flying, private planes are usually smaller 170's, cubs, etc... Flights were, in my opinion, pretty cheap. We each paid $450 round trip, which included them stopping in to pick up meat when needed whenever they were already flying in the area. If they had to make a special trip to come get meat they would charge, but they are flying all the time that time of year and we never waited more than 1 day for that service.
In McCall at Sawtooth Flying Service.
Packed like sardines
Unloading at the strip.
We flew in early on September 30 and were dropped at the airstrip at around 9 AM. We planned to share a basecamp at the airstrip that would only be used when returning to the airstrip with meat. We would leave a tent, 2 extra sleeping bags and pads, and some food and a stove. From there, we would backpack away from the airstrip in teams of two with a spike camp. Drew and I would hunt together and Darryl and Vic would hunt together. I spent many hours pouring over maps and making a plan for this trip and the map work paid off. I wasn't able to explore as much country as I wanted too but that was because we were busy packing meat, so I can't complain. After setting up the basecamp we quickly checked our packs and made final adjustments to our loads and started hiking. We took our time packing in. Our elk tags didn't open until Oct 1 (the next day) and the likelihood of finding a good mule deer buck in the middle of the day was very low. The airstrip is at about 4,000 feet and our intended camp was at 6,000 feet about 6.5 miles away. We started hiking around 1030 or so. The central mountains of Idaho are dry but there is generally water in the canyon bottoms and in some smaller gullies if you find the right conditions. One of the biggest challenges of a backpack hunt in this area is finding a water source in relative proximity to your camp/glassing location. You need to be high to glass effectively but the water is almost exclusively in the bottoms. The mountains are very steep here and to have to drop 1,000 feet for water would not be unusual. Our selected campsite was about 600 feet above a known creek. Most of our hike was enjoyable, relatively easy walking on a trail next to a creek. For the last mile, we would leave the trail and climb a ridge for 1,200 feet that would put us on a relatively flat ridgeline with fairly easy access to a few different glassing knobs. That last mile was grueling with full packs in the afternoon sun. We were able to set our camp up before dark and we got about an hour of glassing in that first night. Drew and I are both pretty good at finding animals and we were both running Swarovski 15's on tripods.... We did not see a single deer or elk that first night. Right at last light we did see a jet black sow with two good sized cubs, which was fun. I remember saying to Drew "I've never seen so much good looking country with so few animals in it..." I was worried about water and wanted to figure our source out. We both had about a liter and a half left and we could have waited until morning but I just wanted to get it over with. We knew there was the creek about 600 feet below us, and we could hear it so we knew that was an option. But while looking at the map I had also seen this little curved gully close to camp. It was south facing (not good) but it was timbered and I thought there might be enough shade to keep a trickle of water flowing there. It was only about a third of a mile from camp and about 200 feet below the ridgeline we were camped on. So I grabbed my 6 liter Dromedary bag and the water filter and my headlamp and made my way over there. When I first got into the gully all I saw was damp earth, and I almost started digging. But I figured it was probably still flowing further up so I moved up the drainage and within 50 feet I could hear a trickle. I moved some rocks and made a spot a few inches deep to place the filter and filled the 6 liter bag. I was so relieved to have found this water source so close to camp, it was going to make a big difference to not have to drop down to the canyon bottom for water every two days. I had also started seeing more recent elk sign between camp and the gully and new the animals were probably using this water source as well. With the water we had back at camp, we now had 2 gallons and I felt a lot more relaxed and was glad we could just focus on hunting the next day without a big side trip to get water at some point.
Looking down at the final ridge we had to climb to get to our camp. The main trail parallels the creek at the bottom of this drainage.
Our camp on the ridge
The next day (Oct 1) our elk tags became valid and we were on our knob at graylight after breakfast and coffee. We had another very slow glassing session and again saw no animals. A few times we thought we heard a distant bugle but we kept talking ourselves out of it as there was also a bird calling that sounded like the distant chuckle of an elk. We headed back to camp at around 1130 to get some shade and lunch and discuss whether we should move up the mountain a couple miles or give this first spot another look in the afternoon. I stepped away from camp to take care of regular morning business and while doing that, I heard an elk bugle up the canyon, clear as day! I ran back to camp and told Drew. We had been seriously considering moving our camp but this gave us a good reason to stay. So we loaded our packs for the afternoon and decided to just move up the ridge slowly, glassing as we could through the timber. As we made our way up in elevation the bull would occasionally bugle and we could tell that we were getting closer and closer. Mid-afternoon he was quiet for quite a while and we decided to take a nap in the shade. I think we hung out there for 45 minutes or an hour and he ripped off another bugle and we could tell he was across the canyon but pretty close. We started moving up again, slower now, and glassing down toward the gully with the water source. We got off the ridge top and started contouring around the canyon to get a better view. Suddenly I saw movement below us and could see the tawny hide of an elk. It was a cow and calf about 150 yards below us in the bottom. They were calm and seemed unaware of us and we watched them until they moved off and saw no bull. We moved forward again and soon saw more cows on the opposite side of the canyon. We glassed them all but still found no bull. Pretty soon the bull bugled again and now we could pinpoint his exact location. He was 400 yards straight across the canyon from us on the opposite ridge in a small patch of timber perhaps 20 yards across. We glassed hard but couldn't see him through the trees. As time went on he bugled more but never showed himself. He must have been bedded there. We started to feel that we needed to make a move or our daylight was going to end before we got a chance. The cows had all moved up the hill back to the bull and we felt they were going to slip out of the canyon into the next drainage without us seeing him or getting a shot. So, we decided to roll the dice. We dropped into the canyon and moved fast. There was fresh elk sign everywhere down there. They were there for the water too. We crossed the little trickle of a stream and started bush-whacking our way up the other side. You can't move through that country quietly. It's steep and sandy and the water supports a lot of brush and there's blow down everywhere. I knew you could make a lot more noise hunting elk than deer, but it seemed like there was no way these animals would tolerate all of this. We got up to the ridge where they had been and of course, they were not there. I felt it might be possible that they be on the slope beyond the ridge feeding but as we crept over the ridge we found nothing there. I felt sure they had spooked up the mountain and were probably gone for good. It was nearly dark and I felt dejected and, thinking about having to descend back to the stream for water and then hike back to camp, I just wanted to get moving. We started walking along the ridgeline in the direction of camp and I looked around a bit but soon I was just hiking again and I let myself get out of "hunt mode." Drew was behind me and after a little while I realized I didn't hear his foot steps anymore and stopped to look back. He was waving his arm for me to come back and pointing down the hill at what I could only assume was a bull. I hurried back to him and looked down the hill and could see the elk down the hill from us about 80 or 90 yards. Drew had wanted me to get first crack at a bull but there was no time and I told him to shoot and plugged my ears and watched. By now the elk knew something was not right and as Drew shouldered his rifle the bull started to move and I heard the crack of the rifle and the bull started to run. It was almost dark but I could see the elk was moving well and didn't appear to be hit. I asked Drew how he felt about the shot and he said "not great." We of course went down and looked for any sign of a hit but found nothing and Drew continued to insist that he had missed. It was a tough opportunity, at very last light with a freestanding shot and a steep angle. Drew was annoyed that he hadn't capitalized on the opportunity but we were also pretty happy, we had gotten an opportunity on our first full day of hunting and the elk were bugling. We descended the steep mountain back to the stream and filled all of our water containers again, giving us something like 4 gallons, before we returned to camp. The nights were warm and we had no need for a fire and didn't even discuss it. Again we talked about leaving the next day to move up the mountain. We seemed to just be at the lower limit of the elevation where the elk were. We had seen zero elk sign that was remotely fresh below 6,000 feet, which is the elevation we were camped at.
Sunset just before we have the encounter with the bull on the first day of hunting.
It made no sense to pack up and hike during the early morning while animals are on their feet so we decided to glass in the morning and if we found nothing we would pack up camp and move during the mid-day. For the first hour or so we saw nothing again. Then, around 830 I was glassing toward the bottom of the drainage the bull had disappeared into the previous night and there he was. I could immediately tell it was a raghorn bull and it fit the description of the one Drew had shot at last night. The bull was just slowly feeding back up the slope toward where we had spooked him the night before. We immediately packed up and ran back to camp and dumped our heavier optics and anything else we didn't need. Then we dropped 5 or 6 hundred feet and climbed 900-1000 back to the ridge we had been on the evening before. We got up there at about 10AM. Once at the top we stopped to catch our breath, drank some water and readied our rifles. Drew still insisted I shoot the bull so I chambered a round and took the lead. The plan was to slowly still hunt the horizontal section of the ridge while glassing down the slope the elk had been feeding up. For the first 10 minutes or so we saw nothing moving but I knew the elk could be anywhere on the slope and I was confident he was there somewhere. Around 1015 I looked down into an open grassy area and there he was, still feeding up the slope. He had no idea we were there. I ranged him at 250 and got my gun set up with Drew's Tricer RS shooting sticks but couldn't get comfortable. I started creeping forward and we were able to close 100 yards really easily. I got set up sitting with my pack upright in front of me and felt really steady and the bull was at 150 yards. He was behind a tree for quite a while but he finally stepped out and gave me a nice quartering-to shot and I put the 140 grain Barnes TTSX through his left neck/shoulder and he immediatley dumped and started rolling down the hill. He rolled for 3 or 4 hundred feet down the slope before finally getting caught up in some oak brush. Drew and I hooted and hugged and then we started to make our way down.
View from our glassing knob toward the area where we had all the action. Camp and the horizontal ridge is to the right. The gully with our water source is to the right of the big triangular slope at center. The horizontal ridge that Drew shot at the elk from and that I eventually killed the elk from is at the top of the triangular face going straight away. The elk were originally in the shaded canyon on the right side of the triangular face and we got the bull on the left side.
A screenshot from the video as I'm squeezing the trigger. You can see the elk just to the right of the branch in front of me.
When we got to the bull I apologized for ruining the next two days and we laughed and got to work taking it apart. We also messaged Darryl and Vic and learned that their spot didn’t work out Due to miles and miles of beetle killed downed timber so they were headed back to the strip. The bull didn’t die in the best place but also not in a horrible location. We were about 800 vertical feet and a half mile from the trail that we would use to hike back to the airstrip, about 7.5 miles away. I shot the bull at 1020, and we started taking him apart around 11. We took the first load of meat down to the trail and started searching for a tree to hang it from. It was a nice shady area in the timber with a creek so it was a great place to hang meat but we couldn’t find anything with big enough branches to support the load. Eventually we settled on a pair of recently downed trees that had fallen into another tree, creating a beam that rested at about a 45 degree angle. We broke some branches off of it and got the 550 cord over the supporting beam, got the meat about 10 feet off the ground and tied the cord off to another downed tree. Sometime during the afternoon we sent an InReach message to Karen at Sawtooth Flying Service letting her know we had meat to be picked up. She let us know pickup would be Sunday, which was perfect because we needed Saturday to pack meat to the strip.
Stoked!
Full loads!
Side-hilling down to the trail
The meat tree.
We left our guns and optics and returned to the kill and got the rest of the meat and the head. Once we got back to the trail we hung the head with the first load of meat and got our pack loads situated for the hike out. Our camp was less than a mile away but we preferred to just get a load to the strip. We started hiking at 8 PM. We stopped occasionally and once tried to take a small nap around 1130 but got cold down by the creek that the trail paralleled. So we pushed on and eventually got back to the strip. I think we were more worn out than we felt because we walked into basecamp at 1 AM. Darryl and Vic were back at camp but they had all of their gear so we were free to use the extra sleeping bags and pads that we had left for this purpose. We hung the meat and crawled into the tent and slept a few hours before the sun came up again. Drew’s pad had a hole in it and the slope was bothering me so neither of us slept well but we felt good the next morning and were excited to share our story with Darryl and Vic.
We had a nice casual morning eating breakfast and drinking coffee around the fire and when we asked them what they planned to do that day they insisted on coming with us to help get the last load. I can’t emphasize how generous this was. We had two full loads of meat to retrieve plus the head and our entire camp. They saved us an entire day of packing as we almost certainly would have had to make two more trips (15 miles each) to bring all of that back (we had only eaten one day of food each, so there was about 25 lbs of food still out there). Darryl and Vic brought their rifles just in case and Drew and I went with just minimal food and water. I was really happy that I had brought my trail runners when we flew in. Since we weren’t going to be doing much off trail work that day I opted to wear shorts and my running shoes. It was glorious! We hiked with Darryl and Vic until we were below our camp and then Drew and I split off and went to get it. We told Darryl and Vic to keep walking and that they couldn’t miss the meat tree from the trail, we would meet them there after we got our camp. When we got there we quickly gave them the camp and food and we loaded the meat in our packs and we got moving. We got back to the strip in 2.5 hours that day, it had taken us 5 hours the night before. While we hadn’t planned to spend a bunch of time at our base camp, it was really nice to hang out around the fire and have a relaxing night with no chores and a plan to sleep in in the morning.
Comfort!
Drew, Darryl, and Vic packing out.
Drew and I made plans to go up the canyon we were in the following day. I told Drew that he was the trigger man and I would do whatever he wanted. We wished good luck to Darryl and Vic as they planned to go fishing for the day, and we waited for the plane to come pick up the meat and head of my elk. After we loaded the elk in the plane and chatted with the pilot for a while we loaded 2 days of food in our packs along with our camp gear and headed up the canyon. It became apparent fairly quickly that this canyon was extremely steep and narrow. I felt good that morning but when walking with a loaded pack I was feeling pretty worn out. I also felt that this canyon was going to be very difficult to hunt, just due to the extreme V-shape. The only reasonable place to camp was in the bottom. The canyon walls were a legit 45 degrees. So, in order to hunt you would need to sleep in the bottom, climb several hundred feet in the dark, then glass the opposite side, then if you find an animal, drop back to the bottom and climb the opposite side to get into shooting position while managing thermals/wind. To me it seemed like a poor setup and I let Drew know what I was thinking. He wanted to get higher and glass so I dropped my pack and we climbed a few hundred feet up the canyon wall to a glassing spot. After glassing a while he agreed with me and we decided we would go back to the strip and he was going to look for a bear that Vic and Darryl had seen a couple days earlier. We tentatively planned to pack back into the canyon where I had killed the elk the next day. I was going to go down to the river to hang out, rest and nap in the sun and take pictures for the afternoon. I dumped all my camp gear and took my rifle and some food and water and started walking down toward the river. The sun had started to get low in the sky and I thought there was a chance that animals could be up and about so I had my rifle slung on my shoulder but was fully expecting to see nothing and just walk down and hang out in the sun. Well, luck was on my side on this trip I suppose. A few minutes before I would have cleared the canyon we were in and stepped into the sun I looked up on the slope above me and saw two mule deer bucks feeding. They were close, I ranged them at 150 yards and they were looking right at me. I glassed them and could see one was a smaller 2 point but the other one had a pretty good frame. I considered my options. I really wanted to get one of the other guys a chance but Drew was a few miles up canyon from me and I had no idea where Darryl and Vic were. Even if I sent them a message there was little chance these deer were going to stick around and wait. The bigger buck stared at me while the smaller buck resumed feeding. I couldn't tell if it was a 3 or 4 point, but having seen no bucks at all since arriving, I decided I better shoot him. I chambered a round and sat down on the trail with my pack in front of me. It was a severe uphill angle and I had to slide lower on the hill to get the right angle to shoot. The buck continued to just look at me, quartering to me with his body angled down hill. I put the crosshair where his chest met his shoulder and squeezed off a round. The deer immediately fell and started sliding down the sandy hill toward me. He rolled a couple times and hung up on a big pine. I heard something snap as he was rolling and figured he probably broke an antler. I waited a few more minutes, watching him in the scope to make sure it was done and then I went up to check him out. Sure enough, he broke his right side while rolling (I have horrible luck with this sort of thing). I found the broken off piece a few feet away and was glad to see it was a perfectly clean break with no missing pieces. Considering what we had been seeing on this trip, I was pleased to have had an opportunity on this deer. It wasn't the deer I was dreaming of when we planned this trip, but you have to adapt to the realities of your hunt. I dragged the deer back down to the trail where I had shot from. I sent a message to Drew letting him know I had a deer down, and I apologized. I genuinely felt bad that he hadn't gotten an opportunity, but that's hunting. The animals are where you find them. I also sent a message to Vic and Darryl letting them know I'd be right on the trail as they returned to camp. I had about an hour of light left and started gutting the deer. Drew arrived first and congratulated me and we kept working. When Vic and Daryl showed up they took our rifles and headed back to camp, which was just 3/4 of a mile up canyon. We sent a message to Karen at Sawtooth Flying Service letting her know we had more meat and where we'd hang it and she said someone would stop by the next morning to pick it up. He's kind of a cool buck, a 3 point with one front fork and one back fork.
My buck and packing back to camp.
Back at camp, we discussed our plans for the next days. It was Sunday evening and we were getting picked up on Wednesday. I again told Drew I was his dedicated packer and would do whatever he wanted to do. At this point my tags were filled and I didn't even need to carry my rifle. He was optimistic that hunting around camp might produce another animal so we made a plan to hike up a mountain from the canyon we were in. Vic decided he would come with us and Darryl was going to hunt solo for the day. The next day we were up and moving early. We would be running and gunning today, stopping to glass where it made sense to do so. Just above the creek as we started to gain elevation above the canyon bottom we spotted a doe and two fawns. They had seen us and even though we were moving up and away from them, they were on high alert and bounded off. A short while later I spotted another deer across the large river that our canyon dumped into. We couldn't identify it as a buck before it disappeared from view so we moved on. A short while later Vic said he had spotted something and I glassed up the mountain and it was 4 bighorn sheep. They were way up the mountain and not on the menu so we didn't spend a lot of time looking at them. We continued up the ridge, glassing little pockets and side canyons as new country became visible until we got to a hump on the ridge that seemed like a good place to stop and glass. As we got settled I looked across the gulley we were sitting above and noticed several dark shapes in a group. The first thing that came to my mind was wolves. I remembered watching wolves in the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone the year before and they would gather and sit in groups like this. I pulled up my binoculars and immediately told the guys that I had elk spotted, and there was a bull! They were all bedded and I could just see their dark necks and heads above the yellow grass. The bull was similar to the elk I had shot, maybe slightly smaller. But a legal 4 point bull. Drew ranged him at 700 yards. The elk seemed like they were already on high alert. They may have seen us crest the hill, but it's hard to say. I noticed that they were all looking downhill at something with their ears up and I had a bad feeling. Drew was making his way around the hillside to get a closer shot and the deer that we had seen at the bottom of the canyon an hour before came running right past the elk at about 10 yards. What bad luck! The elk all got up and started trotting up hill at a quick pace. I saw Drew drop down to get into shooting position but the elk were too fast. They were running straight away, uphill and were up and over the horizon and out of sight inside of 30 seconds. That was a tough pill to swallow. Drew was kicking himself for not setting up for the shot from the hump we were on. I felt a little bad because I had suggested the stalk to get closer because that's what I would have done. But these things are impossible to predict. Honestly it was just bad luck. The elk saw the deer running and they knew something wasn't right and decided to boogie. We glassed a while longer and I saw Darryl across the canyon on a high ridge. We saw the plane come in and land and get the meat that we had hanging in camp from my deer. We decided to continue up the mountain in hopes of finding them bedded in a timbered gully that we could see on the map in the direction that they had run. We gained another 1,000 feet and glassed into the gulley and picked apart the shade but we found nothing. The sun was high and it felt hot now, animals would be bedded for the day. We had nothing better to do than to find some shade and await the afternoon hoping something would appear out of the timbered slopes above us when it cooled down. There was single loan pine and we spent the day chasing the shade around this tree as the sun arced across the sky. Grasshoppers moved across us in the thousands and we talked about hunting and family and work and we took naps. Vic found a spent 300 Weatherby case and we theorized about what it had killed. Finally the afternoon came and the shadows became long but no animals appeared. We slowly worked back down the mountain, glassing as we moved in the same way we had come up. As we approached the canyon bottom we glassed across to where the carcass of my mule deer was, hoping a bear might be on it as Drew had a bear tag and he was hopeful to get one. But there were only magpies. We returned to camp and Darryl hadn't found anything either.
Sunrise in Church before we encountered the bull that got away.
There was no time to pack in anywhere now. The next day would be our last day of hunting. Drew was undecided on whether to hunt the slopes down canyon from us where I had found the bucks feeding on buckbrush or to go back up the canyon we had originally packed into at the beginning of the trip. We got going a little late at gray light and decided to first hunt the lower hills down canyon from us where we had been seeing deer. We didn't find anything and decided to hike over to the other canyon. We hiked up that canyon for about a mile and a half but the sun was high at that point and it was hot and it became pretty clear that our only chance of seeing anything would be to sit there all day and wait for the evening. We decided to go back to the main canyon and explore up river a ways. It was at least shady down there and there were flats at the bends in the river with timber that you could glass and potentially find an animal going to water or feeding on the shady side of the canyon. Drew eventually picked a spot to stop, I opted to hike up river a ways to the next airstrip, just to see it. I returned to him and we walked back toward camp and eventually stopped in the huge meadows around the river where our canyon dumped into the main canyon. It was still hot and sunny so I took a bath in the river and rinsed and dried my clothes in the sun. When they were dry we talked about what we wanted to glass for the evening. We would split up to cover more ground and message each other using our InReach devices if we found something. I felt I had a good spot to glass a buck but all we saw that evening was does. We were both a little down that we hadn't found anything for Drew to shoot on the last day and we started back toward camp with enough light to see if there was a bear at the deer carcass. There wasn't and we made our way back to camp. There were some old apples trees in the canyon where our airstrip was from an old ranch operation. We had been eating them all week. Drew stopped to pick a couple for his boys and I continued on. I could see Darryl and Vic had a fire going as I walked toward camp. When I walked into the firelight I saw a deer head on the ground against the big pine in our camp and a let out a little woop and congratulated Darryl. He had found a buck several miles downstream and shot it in the river. I was really happy that someone else had gotten something and it raised our spirits. We all agreed that this trip was always about adventure, and that we had gotten what we came for. We enjoyed our last night around the fire knowing that the plane would be there in the morning to return us to cell phone service, work, and all the responsibilities of life that we had been able to forget about for the last week.
We were up at graylight the next day breaking down camp and stacking our gear at the airstrip. The plane arrived early and delivered us back in McCall where our phones came to life and suddenly the trip was over, despite still having two days of driving ahead of us. The meat was kept in a large walk-in at the hanger and we loaded coolers and the truck and the air service we used was nice enough to let us use their shower in the hanger. We all tipped the pilot and thanked them and promised to use their service the next time around. Since we were starting our return drive at mid-day we would have to break it up with a stop at a motel. We made it to Bishop where we got rooms and finished the drive to San Diego the following day.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Drew and I talked a lot about our experiences with the elk over those first two days. Neither of us are super experienced elk hunters. I've been on several cow hunts but I consider myself a deer hunter that really likes to have elk in my freezer. We are pretty sure we killed the satellite bull. The bull that was bugling never showed himself and as the sun started to go down that first day before we made our move across the canyon, all of the cows converged on the patch of timber he was in. It was like they were on a magnet to him. When we got over there and had the encounter with the bull the first night, there were no other elk around him. He was off by himself downhill from the ridge they all regrouped on. Similarly, the next day when I found him again, he was by himself. In my mind (not that it really matters to me, I was fully intending to shoot the first spike bull I could find on this hunt), we probably pushed that bull and the cows up the mountain and we just got lucky that this satellite bull happened to be down-slope on the other side of the ridge.
If we were to do this hunt again (we probably will), we will either go later in the season or we will fly to a higher strip. We experienced summer conditions which made finding animals tough. The Frank Church is an amazing place but it isn't a trophy hunting destination. It's all about the adventure. The only people we saw were around the airstrip and there weren't very many even there. I do feel that we could fill more tags if we returned, having learned some very valuable lessons along the way. In hindsight, we might have been better off leaving our camp in it's original location and packing back in with empty packs on Sunday after we packed the rest of the bull out. On the other hand, I wouldn't have shot that deer if we had done that.
Finally, get out and get out of your comfort zone and commit to adventure! A life of adventure is a life well lived. There are lots of places you can find the kind of experience we had in Idaho. We all want to shoot exceptional animals but make sure you're having fun while you're looking for them. I've got a couple more adventures brewing for next year....
I don't recall the first time I heard about the Frank Church Wilderness but I do remember what put it on my radar as a place I wanted to explore and hunt. I believe it was Ryan Callaghan talking about the value of remote wilderness areas on a podcast, probably Meateater or something similar. He spoke of "The Bob" (The Bob Marshall Wilderness) and "The Frank" (The Frank Church Wilderness) with a reverence that made me pay attention. It wasn't that these places had the most amazing hunting that was interesting to me, it was the wildness of them. They are some of the most remote places in the lower 48, and are truly places where you can go and expect to not see another person if you leave the vicinity of the airstrips. I have Drew (@Truduct) to thank for making this hunt happen. We had been sharing information and talking about doing a hunt together. He asked me where I wanted to go and I told him The Frank was a bucket list hunt for me. It was just something I had in my head that I wanted to do at some point. He did the research and really got the the momentum going to make this hunt a reality.
For those that think they may want to do this in the future, just know that your goal should be an adventure hunt with the opportunity to maybe take some game. This is not a hunt that you will see a lot of animals on. They are there, but they are spread out over a huge area during the warmer months. There are a couple roads that give you access to the periphery of the wilderness area but if you want to get into the interior of the wilderness you need to book a flight with one of the local flight services that will fly you in on a small bush plane. We flew from McCall and it was approximately 60 miles, 85% of which was flying over trackless wilderness.
THE FRANK
Early in the planning we were trying to decide whether to hunt the earlier elk tag in September or the later tag that starts in October. We originally decided on the early tag, not wanting to interfere with other hunts in October and hoping for some rut action. Luckily, our decision was vetoed when we failed to buy the early tags before the non-resident quota filled. This turned out to be a blessing as the early season was hot, dry and very smokey from wildfires across the west. Reports from the area in September were that the rut was non-existent. We were pleased as the temperatures continued to drop as our hunt approached. Our hunting party included myself and Drew, Darryl (@Lungpopper) and his good friend Vic. On September 29 we all met at Drew's house at around 3 AM and were driving shortly thereafter. We took turns driving and blasted to McCall in one big 17 hour push. We got a meal at a local restaurant and then crashed at a hotel that night. The next morning we were up early for breakfast and got to the airport before 8 for our flight in. Excitement was high as we loaded the plane and prepared to fly. The 206 is the workhorse in that area for commercial flying, private planes are usually smaller 170's, cubs, etc... Flights were, in my opinion, pretty cheap. We each paid $450 round trip, which included them stopping in to pick up meat when needed whenever they were already flying in the area. If they had to make a special trip to come get meat they would charge, but they are flying all the time that time of year and we never waited more than 1 day for that service.
In McCall at Sawtooth Flying Service.
Packed like sardines
Unloading at the strip.
We flew in early on September 30 and were dropped at the airstrip at around 9 AM. We planned to share a basecamp at the airstrip that would only be used when returning to the airstrip with meat. We would leave a tent, 2 extra sleeping bags and pads, and some food and a stove. From there, we would backpack away from the airstrip in teams of two with a spike camp. Drew and I would hunt together and Darryl and Vic would hunt together. I spent many hours pouring over maps and making a plan for this trip and the map work paid off. I wasn't able to explore as much country as I wanted too but that was because we were busy packing meat, so I can't complain. After setting up the basecamp we quickly checked our packs and made final adjustments to our loads and started hiking. We took our time packing in. Our elk tags didn't open until Oct 1 (the next day) and the likelihood of finding a good mule deer buck in the middle of the day was very low. The airstrip is at about 4,000 feet and our intended camp was at 6,000 feet about 6.5 miles away. We started hiking around 1030 or so. The central mountains of Idaho are dry but there is generally water in the canyon bottoms and in some smaller gullies if you find the right conditions. One of the biggest challenges of a backpack hunt in this area is finding a water source in relative proximity to your camp/glassing location. You need to be high to glass effectively but the water is almost exclusively in the bottoms. The mountains are very steep here and to have to drop 1,000 feet for water would not be unusual. Our selected campsite was about 600 feet above a known creek. Most of our hike was enjoyable, relatively easy walking on a trail next to a creek. For the last mile, we would leave the trail and climb a ridge for 1,200 feet that would put us on a relatively flat ridgeline with fairly easy access to a few different glassing knobs. That last mile was grueling with full packs in the afternoon sun. We were able to set our camp up before dark and we got about an hour of glassing in that first night. Drew and I are both pretty good at finding animals and we were both running Swarovski 15's on tripods.... We did not see a single deer or elk that first night. Right at last light we did see a jet black sow with two good sized cubs, which was fun. I remember saying to Drew "I've never seen so much good looking country with so few animals in it..." I was worried about water and wanted to figure our source out. We both had about a liter and a half left and we could have waited until morning but I just wanted to get it over with. We knew there was the creek about 600 feet below us, and we could hear it so we knew that was an option. But while looking at the map I had also seen this little curved gully close to camp. It was south facing (not good) but it was timbered and I thought there might be enough shade to keep a trickle of water flowing there. It was only about a third of a mile from camp and about 200 feet below the ridgeline we were camped on. So I grabbed my 6 liter Dromedary bag and the water filter and my headlamp and made my way over there. When I first got into the gully all I saw was damp earth, and I almost started digging. But I figured it was probably still flowing further up so I moved up the drainage and within 50 feet I could hear a trickle. I moved some rocks and made a spot a few inches deep to place the filter and filled the 6 liter bag. I was so relieved to have found this water source so close to camp, it was going to make a big difference to not have to drop down to the canyon bottom for water every two days. I had also started seeing more recent elk sign between camp and the gully and new the animals were probably using this water source as well. With the water we had back at camp, we now had 2 gallons and I felt a lot more relaxed and was glad we could just focus on hunting the next day without a big side trip to get water at some point.
Looking down at the final ridge we had to climb to get to our camp. The main trail parallels the creek at the bottom of this drainage.
Our camp on the ridge
The next day (Oct 1) our elk tags became valid and we were on our knob at graylight after breakfast and coffee. We had another very slow glassing session and again saw no animals. A few times we thought we heard a distant bugle but we kept talking ourselves out of it as there was also a bird calling that sounded like the distant chuckle of an elk. We headed back to camp at around 1130 to get some shade and lunch and discuss whether we should move up the mountain a couple miles or give this first spot another look in the afternoon. I stepped away from camp to take care of regular morning business and while doing that, I heard an elk bugle up the canyon, clear as day! I ran back to camp and told Drew. We had been seriously considering moving our camp but this gave us a good reason to stay. So we loaded our packs for the afternoon and decided to just move up the ridge slowly, glassing as we could through the timber. As we made our way up in elevation the bull would occasionally bugle and we could tell that we were getting closer and closer. Mid-afternoon he was quiet for quite a while and we decided to take a nap in the shade. I think we hung out there for 45 minutes or an hour and he ripped off another bugle and we could tell he was across the canyon but pretty close. We started moving up again, slower now, and glassing down toward the gully with the water source. We got off the ridge top and started contouring around the canyon to get a better view. Suddenly I saw movement below us and could see the tawny hide of an elk. It was a cow and calf about 150 yards below us in the bottom. They were calm and seemed unaware of us and we watched them until they moved off and saw no bull. We moved forward again and soon saw more cows on the opposite side of the canyon. We glassed them all but still found no bull. Pretty soon the bull bugled again and now we could pinpoint his exact location. He was 400 yards straight across the canyon from us on the opposite ridge in a small patch of timber perhaps 20 yards across. We glassed hard but couldn't see him through the trees. As time went on he bugled more but never showed himself. He must have been bedded there. We started to feel that we needed to make a move or our daylight was going to end before we got a chance. The cows had all moved up the hill back to the bull and we felt they were going to slip out of the canyon into the next drainage without us seeing him or getting a shot. So, we decided to roll the dice. We dropped into the canyon and moved fast. There was fresh elk sign everywhere down there. They were there for the water too. We crossed the little trickle of a stream and started bush-whacking our way up the other side. You can't move through that country quietly. It's steep and sandy and the water supports a lot of brush and there's blow down everywhere. I knew you could make a lot more noise hunting elk than deer, but it seemed like there was no way these animals would tolerate all of this. We got up to the ridge where they had been and of course, they were not there. I felt it might be possible that they be on the slope beyond the ridge feeding but as we crept over the ridge we found nothing there. I felt sure they had spooked up the mountain and were probably gone for good. It was nearly dark and I felt dejected and, thinking about having to descend back to the stream for water and then hike back to camp, I just wanted to get moving. We started walking along the ridgeline in the direction of camp and I looked around a bit but soon I was just hiking again and I let myself get out of "hunt mode." Drew was behind me and after a little while I realized I didn't hear his foot steps anymore and stopped to look back. He was waving his arm for me to come back and pointing down the hill at what I could only assume was a bull. I hurried back to him and looked down the hill and could see the elk down the hill from us about 80 or 90 yards. Drew had wanted me to get first crack at a bull but there was no time and I told him to shoot and plugged my ears and watched. By now the elk knew something was not right and as Drew shouldered his rifle the bull started to move and I heard the crack of the rifle and the bull started to run. It was almost dark but I could see the elk was moving well and didn't appear to be hit. I asked Drew how he felt about the shot and he said "not great." We of course went down and looked for any sign of a hit but found nothing and Drew continued to insist that he had missed. It was a tough opportunity, at very last light with a freestanding shot and a steep angle. Drew was annoyed that he hadn't capitalized on the opportunity but we were also pretty happy, we had gotten an opportunity on our first full day of hunting and the elk were bugling. We descended the steep mountain back to the stream and filled all of our water containers again, giving us something like 4 gallons, before we returned to camp. The nights were warm and we had no need for a fire and didn't even discuss it. Again we talked about leaving the next day to move up the mountain. We seemed to just be at the lower limit of the elevation where the elk were. We had seen zero elk sign that was remotely fresh below 6,000 feet, which is the elevation we were camped at.
Sunset just before we have the encounter with the bull on the first day of hunting.
It made no sense to pack up and hike during the early morning while animals are on their feet so we decided to glass in the morning and if we found nothing we would pack up camp and move during the mid-day. For the first hour or so we saw nothing again. Then, around 830 I was glassing toward the bottom of the drainage the bull had disappeared into the previous night and there he was. I could immediately tell it was a raghorn bull and it fit the description of the one Drew had shot at last night. The bull was just slowly feeding back up the slope toward where we had spooked him the night before. We immediately packed up and ran back to camp and dumped our heavier optics and anything else we didn't need. Then we dropped 5 or 6 hundred feet and climbed 900-1000 back to the ridge we had been on the evening before. We got up there at about 10AM. Once at the top we stopped to catch our breath, drank some water and readied our rifles. Drew still insisted I shoot the bull so I chambered a round and took the lead. The plan was to slowly still hunt the horizontal section of the ridge while glassing down the slope the elk had been feeding up. For the first 10 minutes or so we saw nothing moving but I knew the elk could be anywhere on the slope and I was confident he was there somewhere. Around 1015 I looked down into an open grassy area and there he was, still feeding up the slope. He had no idea we were there. I ranged him at 250 and got my gun set up with Drew's Tricer RS shooting sticks but couldn't get comfortable. I started creeping forward and we were able to close 100 yards really easily. I got set up sitting with my pack upright in front of me and felt really steady and the bull was at 150 yards. He was behind a tree for quite a while but he finally stepped out and gave me a nice quartering-to shot and I put the 140 grain Barnes TTSX through his left neck/shoulder and he immediatley dumped and started rolling down the hill. He rolled for 3 or 4 hundred feet down the slope before finally getting caught up in some oak brush. Drew and I hooted and hugged and then we started to make our way down.
View from our glassing knob toward the area where we had all the action. Camp and the horizontal ridge is to the right. The gully with our water source is to the right of the big triangular slope at center. The horizontal ridge that Drew shot at the elk from and that I eventually killed the elk from is at the top of the triangular face going straight away. The elk were originally in the shaded canyon on the right side of the triangular face and we got the bull on the left side.
A screenshot from the video as I'm squeezing the trigger. You can see the elk just to the right of the branch in front of me.
When we got to the bull I apologized for ruining the next two days and we laughed and got to work taking it apart. We also messaged Darryl and Vic and learned that their spot didn’t work out Due to miles and miles of beetle killed downed timber so they were headed back to the strip. The bull didn’t die in the best place but also not in a horrible location. We were about 800 vertical feet and a half mile from the trail that we would use to hike back to the airstrip, about 7.5 miles away. I shot the bull at 1020, and we started taking him apart around 11. We took the first load of meat down to the trail and started searching for a tree to hang it from. It was a nice shady area in the timber with a creek so it was a great place to hang meat but we couldn’t find anything with big enough branches to support the load. Eventually we settled on a pair of recently downed trees that had fallen into another tree, creating a beam that rested at about a 45 degree angle. We broke some branches off of it and got the 550 cord over the supporting beam, got the meat about 10 feet off the ground and tied the cord off to another downed tree. Sometime during the afternoon we sent an InReach message to Karen at Sawtooth Flying Service letting her know we had meat to be picked up. She let us know pickup would be Sunday, which was perfect because we needed Saturday to pack meat to the strip.
Stoked!
Full loads!
Side-hilling down to the trail
The meat tree.
We left our guns and optics and returned to the kill and got the rest of the meat and the head. Once we got back to the trail we hung the head with the first load of meat and got our pack loads situated for the hike out. Our camp was less than a mile away but we preferred to just get a load to the strip. We started hiking at 8 PM. We stopped occasionally and once tried to take a small nap around 1130 but got cold down by the creek that the trail paralleled. So we pushed on and eventually got back to the strip. I think we were more worn out than we felt because we walked into basecamp at 1 AM. Darryl and Vic were back at camp but they had all of their gear so we were free to use the extra sleeping bags and pads that we had left for this purpose. We hung the meat and crawled into the tent and slept a few hours before the sun came up again. Drew’s pad had a hole in it and the slope was bothering me so neither of us slept well but we felt good the next morning and were excited to share our story with Darryl and Vic.
We had a nice casual morning eating breakfast and drinking coffee around the fire and when we asked them what they planned to do that day they insisted on coming with us to help get the last load. I can’t emphasize how generous this was. We had two full loads of meat to retrieve plus the head and our entire camp. They saved us an entire day of packing as we almost certainly would have had to make two more trips (15 miles each) to bring all of that back (we had only eaten one day of food each, so there was about 25 lbs of food still out there). Darryl and Vic brought their rifles just in case and Drew and I went with just minimal food and water. I was really happy that I had brought my trail runners when we flew in. Since we weren’t going to be doing much off trail work that day I opted to wear shorts and my running shoes. It was glorious! We hiked with Darryl and Vic until we were below our camp and then Drew and I split off and went to get it. We told Darryl and Vic to keep walking and that they couldn’t miss the meat tree from the trail, we would meet them there after we got our camp. When we got there we quickly gave them the camp and food and we loaded the meat in our packs and we got moving. We got back to the strip in 2.5 hours that day, it had taken us 5 hours the night before. While we hadn’t planned to spend a bunch of time at our base camp, it was really nice to hang out around the fire and have a relaxing night with no chores and a plan to sleep in in the morning.
Comfort!
Drew, Darryl, and Vic packing out.
Drew and I made plans to go up the canyon we were in the following day. I told Drew that he was the trigger man and I would do whatever he wanted. We wished good luck to Darryl and Vic as they planned to go fishing for the day, and we waited for the plane to come pick up the meat and head of my elk. After we loaded the elk in the plane and chatted with the pilot for a while we loaded 2 days of food in our packs along with our camp gear and headed up the canyon. It became apparent fairly quickly that this canyon was extremely steep and narrow. I felt good that morning but when walking with a loaded pack I was feeling pretty worn out. I also felt that this canyon was going to be very difficult to hunt, just due to the extreme V-shape. The only reasonable place to camp was in the bottom. The canyon walls were a legit 45 degrees. So, in order to hunt you would need to sleep in the bottom, climb several hundred feet in the dark, then glass the opposite side, then if you find an animal, drop back to the bottom and climb the opposite side to get into shooting position while managing thermals/wind. To me it seemed like a poor setup and I let Drew know what I was thinking. He wanted to get higher and glass so I dropped my pack and we climbed a few hundred feet up the canyon wall to a glassing spot. After glassing a while he agreed with me and we decided we would go back to the strip and he was going to look for a bear that Vic and Darryl had seen a couple days earlier. We tentatively planned to pack back into the canyon where I had killed the elk the next day. I was going to go down to the river to hang out, rest and nap in the sun and take pictures for the afternoon. I dumped all my camp gear and took my rifle and some food and water and started walking down toward the river. The sun had started to get low in the sky and I thought there was a chance that animals could be up and about so I had my rifle slung on my shoulder but was fully expecting to see nothing and just walk down and hang out in the sun. Well, luck was on my side on this trip I suppose. A few minutes before I would have cleared the canyon we were in and stepped into the sun I looked up on the slope above me and saw two mule deer bucks feeding. They were close, I ranged them at 150 yards and they were looking right at me. I glassed them and could see one was a smaller 2 point but the other one had a pretty good frame. I considered my options. I really wanted to get one of the other guys a chance but Drew was a few miles up canyon from me and I had no idea where Darryl and Vic were. Even if I sent them a message there was little chance these deer were going to stick around and wait. The bigger buck stared at me while the smaller buck resumed feeding. I couldn't tell if it was a 3 or 4 point, but having seen no bucks at all since arriving, I decided I better shoot him. I chambered a round and sat down on the trail with my pack in front of me. It was a severe uphill angle and I had to slide lower on the hill to get the right angle to shoot. The buck continued to just look at me, quartering to me with his body angled down hill. I put the crosshair where his chest met his shoulder and squeezed off a round. The deer immediately fell and started sliding down the sandy hill toward me. He rolled a couple times and hung up on a big pine. I heard something snap as he was rolling and figured he probably broke an antler. I waited a few more minutes, watching him in the scope to make sure it was done and then I went up to check him out. Sure enough, he broke his right side while rolling (I have horrible luck with this sort of thing). I found the broken off piece a few feet away and was glad to see it was a perfectly clean break with no missing pieces. Considering what we had been seeing on this trip, I was pleased to have had an opportunity on this deer. It wasn't the deer I was dreaming of when we planned this trip, but you have to adapt to the realities of your hunt. I dragged the deer back down to the trail where I had shot from. I sent a message to Drew letting him know I had a deer down, and I apologized. I genuinely felt bad that he hadn't gotten an opportunity, but that's hunting. The animals are where you find them. I also sent a message to Vic and Darryl letting them know I'd be right on the trail as they returned to camp. I had about an hour of light left and started gutting the deer. Drew arrived first and congratulated me and we kept working. When Vic and Daryl showed up they took our rifles and headed back to camp, which was just 3/4 of a mile up canyon. We sent a message to Karen at Sawtooth Flying Service letting her know we had more meat and where we'd hang it and she said someone would stop by the next morning to pick it up. He's kind of a cool buck, a 3 point with one front fork and one back fork.
My buck and packing back to camp.
Back at camp, we discussed our plans for the next days. It was Sunday evening and we were getting picked up on Wednesday. I again told Drew I was his dedicated packer and would do whatever he wanted to do. At this point my tags were filled and I didn't even need to carry my rifle. He was optimistic that hunting around camp might produce another animal so we made a plan to hike up a mountain from the canyon we were in. Vic decided he would come with us and Darryl was going to hunt solo for the day. The next day we were up and moving early. We would be running and gunning today, stopping to glass where it made sense to do so. Just above the creek as we started to gain elevation above the canyon bottom we spotted a doe and two fawns. They had seen us and even though we were moving up and away from them, they were on high alert and bounded off. A short while later I spotted another deer across the large river that our canyon dumped into. We couldn't identify it as a buck before it disappeared from view so we moved on. A short while later Vic said he had spotted something and I glassed up the mountain and it was 4 bighorn sheep. They were way up the mountain and not on the menu so we didn't spend a lot of time looking at them. We continued up the ridge, glassing little pockets and side canyons as new country became visible until we got to a hump on the ridge that seemed like a good place to stop and glass. As we got settled I looked across the gulley we were sitting above and noticed several dark shapes in a group. The first thing that came to my mind was wolves. I remembered watching wolves in the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone the year before and they would gather and sit in groups like this. I pulled up my binoculars and immediately told the guys that I had elk spotted, and there was a bull! They were all bedded and I could just see their dark necks and heads above the yellow grass. The bull was similar to the elk I had shot, maybe slightly smaller. But a legal 4 point bull. Drew ranged him at 700 yards. The elk seemed like they were already on high alert. They may have seen us crest the hill, but it's hard to say. I noticed that they were all looking downhill at something with their ears up and I had a bad feeling. Drew was making his way around the hillside to get a closer shot and the deer that we had seen at the bottom of the canyon an hour before came running right past the elk at about 10 yards. What bad luck! The elk all got up and started trotting up hill at a quick pace. I saw Drew drop down to get into shooting position but the elk were too fast. They were running straight away, uphill and were up and over the horizon and out of sight inside of 30 seconds. That was a tough pill to swallow. Drew was kicking himself for not setting up for the shot from the hump we were on. I felt a little bad because I had suggested the stalk to get closer because that's what I would have done. But these things are impossible to predict. Honestly it was just bad luck. The elk saw the deer running and they knew something wasn't right and decided to boogie. We glassed a while longer and I saw Darryl across the canyon on a high ridge. We saw the plane come in and land and get the meat that we had hanging in camp from my deer. We decided to continue up the mountain in hopes of finding them bedded in a timbered gully that we could see on the map in the direction that they had run. We gained another 1,000 feet and glassed into the gulley and picked apart the shade but we found nothing. The sun was high and it felt hot now, animals would be bedded for the day. We had nothing better to do than to find some shade and await the afternoon hoping something would appear out of the timbered slopes above us when it cooled down. There was single loan pine and we spent the day chasing the shade around this tree as the sun arced across the sky. Grasshoppers moved across us in the thousands and we talked about hunting and family and work and we took naps. Vic found a spent 300 Weatherby case and we theorized about what it had killed. Finally the afternoon came and the shadows became long but no animals appeared. We slowly worked back down the mountain, glassing as we moved in the same way we had come up. As we approached the canyon bottom we glassed across to where the carcass of my mule deer was, hoping a bear might be on it as Drew had a bear tag and he was hopeful to get one. But there were only magpies. We returned to camp and Darryl hadn't found anything either.
Sunrise in Church before we encountered the bull that got away.
There was no time to pack in anywhere now. The next day would be our last day of hunting. Drew was undecided on whether to hunt the slopes down canyon from us where I had found the bucks feeding on buckbrush or to go back up the canyon we had originally packed into at the beginning of the trip. We got going a little late at gray light and decided to first hunt the lower hills down canyon from us where we had been seeing deer. We didn't find anything and decided to hike over to the other canyon. We hiked up that canyon for about a mile and a half but the sun was high at that point and it was hot and it became pretty clear that our only chance of seeing anything would be to sit there all day and wait for the evening. We decided to go back to the main canyon and explore up river a ways. It was at least shady down there and there were flats at the bends in the river with timber that you could glass and potentially find an animal going to water or feeding on the shady side of the canyon. Drew eventually picked a spot to stop, I opted to hike up river a ways to the next airstrip, just to see it. I returned to him and we walked back toward camp and eventually stopped in the huge meadows around the river where our canyon dumped into the main canyon. It was still hot and sunny so I took a bath in the river and rinsed and dried my clothes in the sun. When they were dry we talked about what we wanted to glass for the evening. We would split up to cover more ground and message each other using our InReach devices if we found something. I felt I had a good spot to glass a buck but all we saw that evening was does. We were both a little down that we hadn't found anything for Drew to shoot on the last day and we started back toward camp with enough light to see if there was a bear at the deer carcass. There wasn't and we made our way back to camp. There were some old apples trees in the canyon where our airstrip was from an old ranch operation. We had been eating them all week. Drew stopped to pick a couple for his boys and I continued on. I could see Darryl and Vic had a fire going as I walked toward camp. When I walked into the firelight I saw a deer head on the ground against the big pine in our camp and a let out a little woop and congratulated Darryl. He had found a buck several miles downstream and shot it in the river. I was really happy that someone else had gotten something and it raised our spirits. We all agreed that this trip was always about adventure, and that we had gotten what we came for. We enjoyed our last night around the fire knowing that the plane would be there in the morning to return us to cell phone service, work, and all the responsibilities of life that we had been able to forget about for the last week.
We were up at graylight the next day breaking down camp and stacking our gear at the airstrip. The plane arrived early and delivered us back in McCall where our phones came to life and suddenly the trip was over, despite still having two days of driving ahead of us. The meat was kept in a large walk-in at the hanger and we loaded coolers and the truck and the air service we used was nice enough to let us use their shower in the hanger. We all tipped the pilot and thanked them and promised to use their service the next time around. Since we were starting our return drive at mid-day we would have to break it up with a stop at a motel. We made it to Bishop where we got rooms and finished the drive to San Diego the following day.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Drew and I talked a lot about our experiences with the elk over those first two days. Neither of us are super experienced elk hunters. I've been on several cow hunts but I consider myself a deer hunter that really likes to have elk in my freezer. We are pretty sure we killed the satellite bull. The bull that was bugling never showed himself and as the sun started to go down that first day before we made our move across the canyon, all of the cows converged on the patch of timber he was in. It was like they were on a magnet to him. When we got over there and had the encounter with the bull the first night, there were no other elk around him. He was off by himself downhill from the ridge they all regrouped on. Similarly, the next day when I found him again, he was by himself. In my mind (not that it really matters to me, I was fully intending to shoot the first spike bull I could find on this hunt), we probably pushed that bull and the cows up the mountain and we just got lucky that this satellite bull happened to be down-slope on the other side of the ridge.
If we were to do this hunt again (we probably will), we will either go later in the season or we will fly to a higher strip. We experienced summer conditions which made finding animals tough. The Frank Church is an amazing place but it isn't a trophy hunting destination. It's all about the adventure. The only people we saw were around the airstrip and there weren't very many even there. I do feel that we could fill more tags if we returned, having learned some very valuable lessons along the way. In hindsight, we might have been better off leaving our camp in it's original location and packing back in with empty packs on Sunday after we packed the rest of the bull out. On the other hand, I wouldn't have shot that deer if we had done that.
Finally, get out and get out of your comfort zone and commit to adventure! A life of adventure is a life well lived. There are lots of places you can find the kind of experience we had in Idaho. We all want to shoot exceptional animals but make sure you're having fun while you're looking for them. I've got a couple more adventures brewing for next year....
