Finding a Place to Play - Part II
Novice’s Knowledge: Idaho has a near overwhelming amount of public land that could be hunted. How do I narrow down choices and what resources exist to help me put together a robust hunting plan for a specific hunting Unit? I really have no idea how to answer that at the onset of this post.
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32.4 million. That’s the number of acres of public land managed by the National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in Idaho. If all that land were its own state, it would rank as the 32nd largest state, just behind Louisiana and account for 1.3% of the entire United States Land mass. Those are overwhelming numbers for someone who had previously hunted the exact same small valley for the last five years. As stated in a previous post, I decided on which state to hunt rapidly because I knew there would be an intense amount of work in selecting the location within the state, but whoa… 32.4 million acres?
In addition to the vastness of land, I also knew that there was zero opportunities for me to get out to Idaho to scout any potential locations in person. Everything was going to have to get done from afar. Therefore, I needed to be extremely deliberate about how I went about getting my information. It is very easy to get overwhelmed in a situation like this where there are so many possibilities, information, and decisions one could make. I needed to decide what the most important filters would be to begin narrowing down my search. The first question I wanted to answer was what Units still have tags for me to purchase? That’s an easy thing to find on a State’s Fish and Game site. Side bar – I am going to continue to reference Idaho’s Fish and Game agency as they are the agency that I am dealing with for my hunt. In Minnesota, the agency is Fish and Wildlife, in Montana it’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The name differs state to state, but the agency’s purpose is the same across state lines regardless of what they call themselves. For my story, just remember that Idaho Fish and Game (IDFG) is each state’s equivalent wildlife management agency.
Here is how I planned to execute my research of any area – start with the state wildlife management agency’s data/reports, move to local publication articles about the area and its hunting opportunities and finally circle back to the state agency’s boots on the ground (i.e. Rangers, Biologists, etc.). This would allow me to collect a sufficient amount of information prior to contacting local agency employees about having conversations over the phone. Never waste the time of an agency employee by calling and having no background knowledge on an area you’re trying to learn about. If you do this, they will be extremely reluctant to open up to you. I will detail below how I was able to have an hour-long conversation with the local biologist despite them saying he had 10 minutes to talk about the area.
I began by consulting IDFG online to answer what Units still had elk tags available and I was delighted to find data that immediately acted as a second filter to help me with my search for a Unit. On their site, they had a searchable, filterable harvest data guide for all hunting seasons back to 2000. This data would be extremely useful to help paint a picture of how successful hunters were in a certain Unit. I began there by looking through data of success rates for archery hunters going back five years. Trends started to emerge, and I noted Units that seemed to be continually towards the top in terms of hunter success rates. I decided to not include harvest statistics for rifle season in my selection process. The reason that I did this is that I assumed an area can drastically change with regards to what animals are on its landscape based on the time of year. Because elk tend to move to lower elevations as the days grow shorter, I figured that a herd that was plentiful in an area during September (archery season) could all but disappear there by mid-October (rifle season). But remember – I’m kind of just making this up as I go, so I could be wrong. Regardless, I decided to exclude rifle hunting statistics in driving my decision.
Using the harvest statistics as a guide I worked out a few Units that continued to have high success rates over the five-year period that I studied. From the image below, you can see that 68A, 10, 33, 36 and 76 had some very successful 2016 seasons. This led me to pulling up quota information on each of these Units and I discovered that 10, 36 and 76 still had tags remaining that I could purchase.
I then began diving deep into each of these three Units. In considering the past five years of data, Unit 10 continued to stand out, minus two down years where the success rate was in the low teens. Despite this, it always seemed to have a fair amount of elk harvested with 6+ points (number of spikes on an antler rack), which is a decent indicator of mature bulls in the area. Using that data, I decided to make my focus Unit 10 for further investigation. I would also note that I wasn’t committed to Unit 10 and I would be willing to bail on that plan if further investigation made me wary.
To do additional research, I focused largely on local newspapers/publications, reports issued by the National Forest Service and online forums to help me paint a picture of the opportunity Unit 10 may have in store for me. I quickly picked up on a common theme for this Unit. The elk population has seen a drastic reduction in numbers over the last two decades. Contrary to what you may think, this got me excited the more I learned about the area’s history. One thing all the negative press meant was that I would be up against very little hunter competition in the area.
This area (called the Lolo Zone - a combination of two Units, Unit 10 and 12) had held one of the greatest elk herds in the entire country a few decades ago. However, report after report told me that recently a strong population of wolves in the Zone had begun decimating the herd. Elk numbers dropped from a high of 16,000+ to near 1,000. And it seemed like wolves were entirely to blame. Or at least that’s what the newspaper reports kept saying. It turns out that Lolo is a very controversial Zone in the state of Idaho. People seemed polarized on this wolf issue – some were very upset that the wolves were destroying the population while others defended the population of wolves saying that there was more to blame than the re-introduction of the predator.
Along with the wolf issue, every so often an article or forum would mention the terrain and how thick and overgrown it had become. It always seemed to be a side comment that never had very much follow up. I noted the wolf issue and the terrain issue and decided to focus on these items and find out how real of a problem they were. IDFG had its own Wolf Management Plan from 2011 that I could find on their site that listed the population goals for the Zone. Within about two days of research I felt that I had enough information to intelligently ask questions to someone who lived and worked in the Zone to gather up even more data.
While reading through articles and forums, any time that a name came up who worked for the Forest Service or IDFG, I made note of their information to follow up with later. After gathering enough background data online, I began reaching out to these folks with an email asking for their time to talk about the Zone. Below is a transcript of the email I used. In all honesty, it’s probably too wordy but it worked. I was trying to show the research that I had performed, and be specific about what I wanted to discuss.
Mr./Mrs. XYZ,
My name is Kyle Zibrowski. I am currently planning on purchasing an OTC out of state elk tag for the archery season for this coming Fall in the Lolo Zone. In researching the area, I have come across your name numerous times in articles about the area. Because of this, I thought that I would reach out to see if you would have some time to talk through details about the area, with regards to the population as well as general terrain. Being out of state, I have to cram all of my research time in via the internet and speaking with someone like yourself would be immensely helpful.
The primary questions that I have right now are centered around the wolf population, as it seems that the last four or so years there has been a focused effort to manage their population in the Lolo Zone and based on the past few years of harvest data, it seems like those efforts are paying off in terms of the elk population. But again, these are details that I would really like to get your input on.
I appreciate any consideration you can give this request.
Regards,
Kyle Zibrowski
Using this tactic, I set up a call with the local Biologist. This call was an absolute gold mine of information, with some of the highlights being:
Forest fires in 1910 and 1933 coupled with logging activities up to 1960 created perfect elk habitat by opening hillsides that became lush meadows which directly lead to the world class elk herds of the 60s-80s.
Wolves were indeed in the area – however, the Biologist questioned their impact on the population as much as the IDFG wolf management report seemed to blame wolves.
The choked-out terrain seemed to be, in their opinion, a bigger driver to the loss of elk in the area.
I was given unreleased population study numbers. Basically, it was like being the WikiLeaks of the elk hunting world. And let’s just say these studies made me more excited about the area.
Success rates seemed to be driven by harsh winters, with worse results following difficult winters where animal survival rates were low. Three of the last four winters were mild.
Without asking, he suggested focusing on an area that cut the Zone down drastically.
While I was ecstatic with the outcome of this talk, it did not come without fair warning of the area’s extreme ruggedness and remoteness. This is something I was prepared to hear, and upon completion of the phone call I began putting together a mental/physical training workup plan to make sure I would be prepared (later post). The information that I received allowed me to commit myself to the Lolo Zone.
While I have only made one call yet, there are at least two more coming. Once I have a more robust hunting plan put together I will be calling both the IDFG and the National Forest Service (the Lolo Zone is in the Clearwater National Forest) to discuss the hunting plan and make sure that there are no developments in the area that I need to be aware of that may affect my plans.
So far on this site, there has only been discussion about planning the physical location of the hunt. This is an extremely important step in the process that should not be taken lightly, which is why I have chosen to focus on it first. While there is still planning details to come with follow up posts, I will begin changing up topics every few posts as there is still much to cover. We’ll look at training (both physical and mental), shooting practice, gear, ethics and much more.
Thanks for tuning in.
Kyle Zibrowski
