Hunting guide scopes out elk

Bill Gregg sat by the fire at a campsite in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest and waited for the client to arrive. By Tuesday afternoon, everything was ready for some fellow from San Francisco to come and kill an elk.

Hunting is more than a family tradition in the Idaho Panhandle; it’s a good business. Gregg, a hunting guide for Coeur d’Alene River Big Game Outfitters, has been in the forest now for more than six weeks, first guiding hunters to cougar and bear, and now elk.

By far, most of his clients are from east of the Mississippi, lured to the West by advertisements in magazines and on Web sites such as eBay and craigslist. They’re willing to pay upwards of $450 a day – five days minimum – for the hunting camp services Gregg and his girlfriend, Myndy Shattel, provide.

Gregg has scouted the mountains in the Coeur d’Alene River drainage, and he knows right where to take the guy from San Francisco.

“We don’t guarantee they will shoot one, but we guaranteed they’ll see, hear or smell one,” Gregg said.

The wall tents are up. The firewood is all cut, split and stacked. Provisions are laid in.

Shattel has the menu planned – roast beef, steaks, maybe some fish. Everything she knows about cooking her mother and grandmother taught her.

“We don’t eat out of a box here,” Gregg said.

What’s the most important thing to know about cooking at a hunting camp?

“Gravy,” Shattel said without hesitation. She’s confident about her gravy, less so about her Dutch oven biscuits. But Gregg assured her the client will have nothing to complain about in that regard. Shattel is last to go to bed at night and the first up in the morning, stoking the fires for everybody else.

If the client gets his elk, Gregg will have the job of packing the animal out. An adult male can weigh 700 pounds or more. Gregg will have to quarter it and pack it out, carrying the pieces out on his back, about three days’ work.

The client is likely to have some luck in the Panhandle, according to one veteran hunter.

Idaho Fish and Game is well-managed for hunter opportunity, and the Panhandle is very well-managed, said Brian Farley, a certified hunter-education instructor and member of the Idaho Fish and Game Advisory Committee.

Farley said the elk population in North Idaho has rebounded from the terrible winter of 1996, and harvest statistics now equal or exceed those of 25 years ago. The Coeur d’Alene Mountains are considered to be among the best for trophy bulls because of the good cover and terrain.

But Farley, who has killed many such trophies, fears that may not last.

“The elk kill this year, or maybe last year, will be the best we will have in a long time,” Farley said, “because wolves are moving north and will soon have an impact.”

Since the federal wolf relocation program in the 1990s, wolf packs have entered into the St. Joe River drainage. It’s only a matter of time, Farley believes, before they begin to have an effect on the elk hunting north of Interstate 90.

“Modern game management does not include uncontrolled predation,” Farley said, adding that in the St. Joe, wolves are already starting to take a toll on elk herds.