LAST EDITED ON Mar-16-07 AT 01:33AM (MST)[p]I hunted the East side of it last year. Probably put in 90 miles or so on foot so I can speak with some credibility on the area.
It's crawling with wolves. There are very few, if any huntable elk. Certainly is not considered a trophy area and a 350+ bull would be an extreme outlier. The seemingly viable areas for elk are already "taken" by the same 8-man group of meat hunters from Wisconsin that have been going there for 20 some odd years out of habit, the Shepp Ranch outfitters and their clients, or occasional guy like myself that thought he might have been on to something with the acclaimed "Selway B Tag".
Do not waste your time.
We saw a couple sets of elk tracks. Very very very very very little sign. No bugles, grunts or cow calls to be heard...ever, and I have a very acute sense of hearing. My partner thought he saw a cow in some deep timber. (It's either steep and open or steep and thick timber) I took a "middling" buck for freezer meat in the wilderness. I saw a spike on the outskirts of Dixie, but elected not to shoot it since it was early in the season.
The real highlight of the trip was when I bugled/cow called a couple of wolves in almost on top of me. The dinner bell was ringing and they were flat out running in for the kill! I noticed them at about 40 yds and by the time I yelled an indecipherable cave-man expletive while trying with an advanced degree of desperation to drop the call, unsling the rifle from my shoulder, get it up in the direction of the oncoming canines...they had closed to 20 yds. Sufficiently "boogered" ... I made my way back to our bivy camp and nearly tripped over three wolf-killed elk carcasses getting there. Night settled in and they howled all around the perimeter of a very large, very genuine white-man fire. I was wishing I'd brought the Benelli autoloader instead of the lightweight bolt-action mountain rifle I had in my lap. Pretty interesting. Didn't get much sleep.
I had been in denial pretty much the whole trip since I usually don't have a problem getting on game, but that's about the time I determined that Idaho Fish & Game didn't have the f@#&ing foggiest clue as to the real damage that wolves had done and are doing to the ungulate population in their backcountry.
I thought I was pretty lucky to have gotten one of the Selway B tags since one can use a rifle during the rut. During my research I spoke with the biologist that is responsible for game animal numbers and tags in the area. After much questioning/interogation, he admitted that their estimated elk and deer numbers were based on fly-over data from 4-5 years ago. He admitted those numbers were skewed since a very large fire had displaced game animals into the Gospel Hump area. He admitted to never actually ever set foot in the country. He also admitted that elk depredation by wolves had not been factored in since there was not enough data to determine an accurate wolf headcount...and therefore a depredation algorithm would not be useful.
Read...their elk numbers were/are wildly overstated and the wolf numbers were/are wildly understated.
Hmmm...I could have sworn Biology was supposed to be an Evironmental Science...not a Political Science!
I spoke with the outfitter in the area as we were heading out about their client's success in the wilderness and in their area around Dixie. I don't recall the exact numbers off-hand (I'll have to review my post-hunting trip thread on Kifaru for the exact numbers), but, I think they were something like 36 in 2004, 17 in 2005 and 3 in 2006 (as of end of Sept). If those numbers don't speak for themselves, then someone is either a pro-wolfer, a complete moron, a desk-driving F&G biologist...or all of the above!
In short, forget about unit 19 for elk...it would be a monumental waste of you or anyone else's time. Wait til 2008 if you draw one of the TEN (10)....yes, that's right...10 wolf tags for the ENTIRE state, yes, that's right...the ENTIRE state. You'll get a wolf easy...that is if they haven't completely eaten or sport-killed themselves out of house and home and have moved on to fleshier pastures.
A better use of your time would be to get the F&G biologists to pull their head out of their asses and wake up to some of the harsh realities imposed on our game populations by the reintroduction of pack-hunting apex predators in such topographically confined geography/habitat.
That, or your tag might be put to better use elsewhere in the Selway. I know someone who hunted in the Moose Creek drainage with an outfitter (NE of Elk City...fly-in) and he said they saw quite a few animals. I wouldn't really consider him an elk hunter and he is somewhat pro-wolf, so that info ought to be taken with a rather large grain of salt. Not giving anything away here since you pretty much have to get flown in and/or use an outfitter to get you away from the crowds on the airstrips.
________________________________________________
Liberalism is the philosophy of Western suicide.
