Anyone hunt the Middle Fork Zone in Idaho??

[Mike]

I'm looking for insights on elk hunting in the Middle Fork Zone of Idaho. Some friends and I are looking at that area for a rifle hunt in 2010 and would love some first-hand knowledge.

Thanks,
Mike

[sixshooter]

Idaho is devided into a bunch of units that they call zones for elk. The middle fork zone includes unit 20A, unit 26 and unit 27. These are true back country units that are in the river of no return wilderness area. I am getting old and have spent much of my life in Idahos back country. There are a few roads that get to trail heads that penetrate the wilderness but this is primarily hunting done by foot or horse, airplaine or whitewater raft. If you are mounted on good sadle horses with good pack equipment you can penetrate the area to about anywhere. It is what Jack Oconor said it is, the stepest country on the face of the earth. The wolfs have changed the dynamics of elk hunting considerably.

If you have good horses then pic a trail head and plan your hunt. Most flatlanders say stuff like my horeses can travel 20-40 miles a day. This is true some places but not in big mountain country. The governing thing there is how much vertical they can climb. Really good horses can climb one mile vertical per day. Much more will kill them. In some areas this means you will only be about a mile from where you started.

If you do not have good horses but have whitewater rafts you can float the middle fork and hunt from the river up. This requires a lot of hiking and a lot of knowledge of river dynamics and a permit from the forest service.

There are airfields and outfitters interspersed thru the area and some provide some world class hunts. I am partial to the Salmon River Lodge at corn creek but there are others. Let me know what kind of hunt you are looking for and I will tell you what I know.

[Mike]

Sixshooter, thank you very much for chiming in. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge about this area with me.

We're currently weighing a couple of options that you have mentioned. We're checking prices on renting a string of pack horses and also getting shuttle service on the river. So far, we've contacted a few of the guides in the area about pack horses. The results haven't been that great so far. The guides either seem uninterested in renting horses or have the prices at what appear to be fairly high levels. Any input or resources that you might have in this regard would be most appreciated.

I've read that the areas surrounding airfields are pretty heavily hunted. For that reason, we've kind of lost interest in that option. If our line of thinking is incorrect and it is a good option, we could certainly look at it as well.

This hunt is going to include 4-6 guys (four confirmed and two more maybes) who are all on our first elk hunt. We're not going out there with any wild fantasies of all knocking down 6 x 6's, but we'd like to have a good time and have a productive hunt.

We've focused most of our attention on units 20A and 27, based on information that we've gathered online. Those two units seem to have higher success rates and more elk than 26. We're basing this on stats pulled from Idaho's Fish and Game web site. We're finding the process of narrowing down to a specific hunting area quite challenging, though. Since none of us has actually been out there, we're trying to find some local input to help put us on the right track.

[sixshooter]

Mike,

The hart of tha matter is what kind of shape are you in. 27 is really rugged country but so is 20A.

27 can be accessed from the middle fork starting at boundary creek and floating down into it. I have not resurched if it is in 27 at the put in but the wilderness starts about there so it probably is. In the spring and early summer this is a wild whitewater rush but in september this is a small boney river that is difficuld to take anything much bigger than a rubber canoe down and that would require a fair amount of walking in the river acording to friends that do it for fun. They dont end up hunting just spend the whole time floating. This is unfortunate because it starts high up and the elk are around but not so high up from the river at the upper elevations. This changes as you go down.

Most people fly into the flying b or bernard and start their float from that point. This gives them about 35 miles of really technical whitewater. If you are a good boatman this is fun stuff with enough water to take a full sized raft but it is still really easy to wrap pin or flip the raft. But the elk are way above them on the canyon walls. A friend of mine said after hunting sheep there that only really serious hunters would try it and only really crazy people would go back a second time. This is not a less expensive option than an outfitter as it requires getting all your gear to salmon then flying it in then getting your truck to the end of the road. It is however a real adventure.

I would not lease a horse to anybody that was going into the wilderness. If they were a vetrinarian and horse shoer by trade then maybe but the cost would still be high. You might look at a spot camp where an outfitter takes your stuff in and out. Or you might have a jet boat take you down river and spot you along 20A then pick you back up when you are ready to leave. The main salmon corridor along 20A has a lot more traffic than most of the back country but it thins out as you move up above the river.

Give me some more insight into what type of hunt you want and we will talk.

[Hotshot]

Mike,

Have you ever seen where you are planning to go? Consider an outfitter to keep you and your friends safe and have a hunt filled with good memories.

[Mike]

Thanks again, sixshooter. I'm not a triathlete, but like to think that I'm in half way decent shape. I typically run about three miles a day, five days a week. Of course, that's here in the flat lands of Missouri which are a world apart from the mountains of 20A and 27. I'll be incorporating some hill climbs in my fitness preparation for this hunt, as will my friends.

Renting a jet boat service or having an outfitter drop us off and pick us back up seem to be the best options. I get the impression that this is not a place where we'd do well to park our vehicles and hike several miles on foot to set up base camp. Is that an accurate view of the area?

We want to set up a base camp and then leave out from there each morning for our hunts and then return to camp at night. We have a wall tent with a heater that we can bring along, but that would only be if we go with horses or a boat. No one's going to volunteer to carry that thing up the mountain sides on foot for any great distance.

[Mike]

Mike,

Have you ever seen where you are planning to go? Consider an outfitter to keep you and your friends safe and have a hunt filled with good memories.

We've only seen the area in pictures and read about other people's accounts out there. My friends and I don't mind a challenge, but we certainly don't want to do something stupid or dangerous that would endanger any of us.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but how plausible would it be to find someone with a string of pack horses who could take us out there and work loosely with the whole group (rather than a one-on-one guide service)? I'm really trying to keep the costs as reasonable as possible for all of the members of our group.

[Rick in Oregon]

Mike, try putting an ad in a local paper there to see you can find some out of work cowboy who has some horses and time on his hands. Anybody doing that though may be required to have a guides license.....check it out as it may be an easy way to find someone willing to help that's also familiar with the country.

In the end, the best quality, most productive hunt would come from booking with a guide/outfitter as you know.

[Mike]

Rick, we talked with the Idaho Fish and Wildlife department about hiring someone to pack us in. They informed us that anyone doing this for a fee is required to have a guide license.

A fully guided hunt would be a lot of fun, but I'm afraid that it's not in the cards for everyone in our group this time around.

[sixshooter]

Mike,

It sounds to me like you will do well in the Idaho back country. It does not require triathalete but I bet that would help. The rule of thumb is that you can do 4 times what you train for without hurting yourself. That would imply that if you hiked 12 flat miles you could still hunt the next day. In mountain country this means that you can climb 1500 to 3000 feet without being a zombie the next day. That means that you are getting the equivelent of about a 700 foot vertical elevation change per day with your training.

I had to look pretty hard to find the definitions of the hunting units. They use to be in the regs but now it is just a map and no writen definition. My hunting has been by pack string so I have not tried to find a place to hunt without them unless I was floating. I dont know anything about the west side of the wilderness area. All my acess has come from the city of salmon side. It appears that the area can be accessed by road from the camus creek drainage near meyers cove and also from the middle fork peak look out. Try google earth for both of these locations for a sense of the terain.

My guess is that both of these locations will have hunters but there will be room for you as well. Google earth has a neat feature that if you look at the bottom it will tell you the elevation where the curser is. Middle fork peak will be at about 8,000. In a couple of miles you will be on the middle fork and down around 3500. Thats not a bad walk down and except for the strain on your knees it will seem like an easy trip. The hike back up is the killer.

The forest service sells a good map that will show you how to get to this area if it is of interest to you. I believe the trip to middle fork peak will be memorable all by itself.

I also talked to a friend of mine who use to outfit in 20A and he said most outfitters will spot your gear for a significantly lower price if you can get it to them so they can work it into their schedule.

Best of luck.

[Mike]

Thank you for that post, sixshooter. I sincerely appreciate you (and the others) taking time to help guide me in the planning phase of this hunt. Your insights are quite helpful.

[sixshooter]

Mike,

This is not aimed at you so dont take offense but do think about it and talk about it with your partners. Anyone in good shape and a will to hunt, will push to their limits. If you push to the bitter edge of where you can get then see the bull of your dreams will you shoot it. Most people probably would. It will most likely be hot and not that conducive to keeping meat for a long time. Will your partners help.

For us if one of us gets a big bull down then everybody hunt is more or less over until we get the bull out to a freezer. If you bone a big bull out you will have about 300# of meat and a heavy set of horns with a cape. This means about 8 backpack trips unless it is close enough that you can carry 100# plus packs. It is worth it to predetermine if you can rent a freezer someplace and the logistics of getting to it.

The best ending to this adventure would be good memories of a hard hunt with lots of meat and a big trophy head or heads. The worst ending would be one two or three dead bulls wasted except for thier horns. The primitive area is a real resource and should be utilized by people from all over. Make me proud and show us some pictures when you get back.

[Mike]

No offense at all, sixshooter. I'd be sick beyond belief if anyone in our hunting group wasted an elk.

We're certainly going to put forth our best effort and I will definitely be taking lots of pictures. It's hard to imagine that a year from now, I'll be out there hunting. In some ways, that time seems like it will never come. In other ways, I'm not sure how we'll get everything done between now and then.

I'm going deer hunting this weekend, so that will be fun. Maybe I'll run into something worth posting pictures of and can share the story when I'm back on Tuesday.

[stevecrea]

Mike,

Renting horses and gear would be problematic unless at least one or two of your crew is very knowledgeable about packing and horses. There is a lot of art and skill to it, including proper knots, proper care and handling of horses, and a host of other knowledge. I would not recommend it unless you are quite experienced in these skills. As has already been pointed out, this region is generally not roaded, is remote, and contains a lot of very steep, rocky, cliffy terrain.

In the 2008 season, we jetboated into Mackay Bar in early November. We had no horses and hunted on foot, and I am in good shape, with running, hiking, and backpacking. There were many elk, but almost no horns to be seen. This area was ravaged by forest fires earlier in the year, and that was probably a factor. I shot a spike bull, which was the only bull I saw.

The drop camp may be a very good alternative for you. It is much less costly, and the outfitter usually has tents, stoves, and all set up for you. But, of course, make all the proper inquiries. Later in the season when the weather is cool, it is much easier to care for the meat.

These units open early and stay open quite late into the season.

[sixshooter]

Mike,

Did you buy your Middle Fork Elk Tag. There were only about 90 left this morning.