Game for the trail

Nothing takes modern big-game hunters to their roots more quickly and efficiently than a wilderness-bound pack string. Wall tents, wood stoves and saddle sores are part of a Western autumn tradition that dates back to the mountain men, although nowadays a wilderness hunt is a luxury in more ways than one. Cinching saddles before daylight, going one-on-one with a bull elk far from road-hunters and fences and packing out the meat by muscle power are tantalizing experiences for hunters who have access to horses and mules. An industry is supported by hunters willing to pay from $600 for drop-camps to more than $4,000 apiece for a weeklong outfitted and guided elk hunt in the Bob Marshall Wilderness of Montana. Dave Waldron, who operates Western Life Outfitters based in Pomeroy, Wash., has served hunters in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. He cited pros and cons to hunting on both sides of a wilderness boundary. “A pack trip usually gets away from what you want to get away from, whether it’s into wilderness or non-wilderness,” he said. Waldron has been guiding in non-wilderness areas of Idaho for the past eight years, but has moved home to Washington this year to offer trips in the Blue Mountains, where he hunted even before the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness was designated in 1978. “The access is different and it’s more work in the wilderness because you can’t ride in on a four-wheeler or use a chain saw, and I don’t mind that,” he said.

“Outfitting in a wilderness helps attract customers who are looking for a wilderness experience.

They don’t want to be in camp and have a motorcycle run by. We get an hour up the trail and you won’t hear anything but nature.”

But official wilderness isn’t necessarily a guarantee for prolific big-game herds and great hunting, especially in smaller wilderness areas.

Human and natural influences in and out of the wilderness boundaries have caused the Wenaha-Tucannon herd to decline dramatically in the past 25 years.

Of the several herds that roam the Blue Mountains of Washington and Oregon, the elk that reside most of the year in a portion of the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness have shown the most alarming decline.

Only 500-600 elk from the herd wintered north of the Wenaha River last year, compared with about 2,000 in the early 1980s, said Pat Fowler, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in Walla Walla.

“The wilderness is not pristine in that we still practice fire suppression in the Wenaha,” Fowler said. This Umatilla National Forest management policy is in contrast to the general let-burn policy in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, which is nearly nine times larger than the Wenaha-Tucannon.

“Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem. The Wenaha has been protected from fires for 60 to 70 years. In the 30 years I’ve been here, elk wintering patterns have changed as the mountain browse grew out of reach. The elk moved farther south to Oregon.

“We no longer see the elk scattered in groups throughout the wilderness like we did in the ‘70s. I think it’s directly related to no fire.”

East of the Tucannon River, heavy tribal hunting, which cannot be regulated by the state, has substantially reduced the number of adult bulls, he said. The area is short on big bulls needed to breed all the cows.

A complex combination of factors including habitat changes may contribute to increased elk losses to predators, he said.

“The Wenaha herd has the lowest calf survival of any herd in the Blues,” Fowler said. “It’s not uncommon to have only 9 to 15 calves per 100 cows (at the end of the summer) when we should be having 35 to 40.”

Preliminary results from a study under way in Oregon found that 28 of the 38 elk calves fixed with radio collars in 2003 perished before they were a year old, he said.

“That’s a 78 percent mortality rate,” he added. “Of those dead calves, 96 percent were killed by predators with 86 percent of the predator kills being taken by cougars.

“The cougar populations are much bigger than they were 30 years ago and most of the change has been in the last 15 years.”

“If we could get fire reintroduced, that would improve things tremendously for both deer and elk. The Forest Service has tried to get some prescribed burning, but there are so much politics and restrictions it’s really hard for them to get it done.”

Meanwhile, the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness has lost much – but not all – of its attraction to hunters.

Restrictive wilderness rules imposed in 1978 shook up hunting styles, but they weren’t the culprit, said Rich Martin of the Umatilla National Forest. Martin has been has been packing horses, maintaining trails and dealing with year-round recreation on the Pomeroy Ranger District since 1974 – four years before the Wenaha-Tucannon was declared wilderness.

“The area is more wild now, the biggest change being that we cleaned up the hunter camps,” he said.

Hordes of hunters had become accustomed to leaving tent poles, plastic tarps, wood stoves and other gear in the Wenaha backcountry year-round to accommodate their annual big-game season visits.

Some of them protested bitterly when the new wilderness rules required packing out their gear after each hunt and obliterating any permanent camp fixtures.

Before the 177,500-acre wilderness was designated, the Wenaha-Tucannon had a 66,000-acre “backcountry” area where motorized vehicles were prohibited. That wasn’t enough protection for this mostly peakless region of long ridges and deep canyons, Martin said.

“We had motorized traffic down most of the ridges, and that was back before ATVs,” he said.

But no management adjustments compare with the changes in recreational use caused by the decline of the Blue Mountains elk herd.

“When it first went to wilderness, we were having 5,000 head of stock and 3,000 hunters heading into the wilderness at one time during the elk season,” Martin said. “It was huge.”

“The Panjab trailhead area was filled with people and rigs parked down the road three to four miles.

These hunters weren’t primarily after the wilderness experience, he said. They were after elk.

And when the elk started to disappear and stricter hunting regulations were applied hunter numbers in the Blue Mountains declined from around 18,000 in the late ‘70s to around 3,500 last year, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In 2003, hunters killed only 16 bull elk out of the Wenaha Unit, compared with a harvest of 60-100 bulls 20 years ago, Fowler said.

With less demand, the Wenaha-Tucannon trail system isn’t maintained to the same standard, but there’s still 235 miles of decent trails, Martin said.

This fall, instead of dealing with crowds, hunters will be “in a few camps here and there scattered throughout the wilderness,” he said. “It’s much more enjoyable for those who come.”

Dave Waldron said that in order to survive, outfitters must groom a growing market for packing non-hunters into the wilderness during spring and summer.

But the absence of crowds has revived the wilderness experience as a main attraction for Wenaha hunters who hire the services of outfitters.

“Like many hunters, I tried backpacking one time with my brother and I vowed I’d never again carry anything heavier than a mule’s lead rope,” he said.

With fewer elk and more hunting restrictions in Washington, Waldron can’t command the higher fees charged by outfitters in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, although he said the mule deer hunting in the Wenaha is excellent.

He charges $600 a person for hike-in hunters who hire him to pack their own gear into the wilderness and drop it off at a designated site.

For $900, Waldron will pack a hunter’s food and personal gear into one of his camps, already set up with a wall tent, kitchen gear, lantern, wood stove and a small supply of firewood.

“Some people go overboard burning the wood, so we let them supply most of their own since the work has to be done without a chain saw,” Waldron said. “If you have to cut it yourself, you get some respect for where it comes from — and it heat’s you twice, once at the chopping block and once in the stove.”

A full-service guided hunt for elk or mule deer runs $2,500 a person, he said, noting that he also has hunting option for white-tailed deer just outside the wilderness.

Regardless of which option a hunter chooses, the outfitter regularly rides in or checks in by radio to see if any meat needs to be packed out.

Next week, Waldron is scheduled to pack in a second generation of Western Washington hunters whose fathers began hunting the Wenaha backcountry in 1950s and ‘60s.

“These are hunters who started going into the wilderness with their dads in the ‘80s and this is what they do in the fall,” Waldron said. “Even though the elk have declined, these hunters are successful because they know the area and how the elk travel.

“I’ll take them to the same camp they’ve been in for 20 years.”