Boyds Will Be Boyds: Wilderness Adventure 2009 (by Chad E. Boyd)

My Dad, my buddy Josh, and myself had been planning a week long hunting trip into the back country of the Sawtooth Wilderness for a good 20 months. After those many months of planning and waiting, the day was quickly approaching for us to start the adventure. Then just one day away, we recieved a call from our guide to tell us that due to the snow he was not able to set up our camp. He was calling to talk to us about a camp that was about 4 miles into the wilderness. Now our planned camp was over 18 miles in, and so we told him that we wanted to go at least 10 miles in or not at all. The guide had another camp to put in that day so he said he would call back in the evening and discuss our options. Luckily some rain reduced the snow on the ground and the weather warmed up, so our outfitter agreed to take us as far as we wanted to go, short of hurting the horses and mules. Good enough! And so at 2:30 am on Friday 10/16/09, we left Kent to meet with our guide at the trailhead 4 hours later. Soon after arriving at the trailhead, our outfitter (Brian) and his son (Dylan) arrived and started to saddle the horses and load the mules. Josh and I looked over the potential mounts and discussed which steed would best serve us. Of course, we had no knowledge of what would make a good horse and were no part of the decision on which horse we got, but it passed the time.

Here is Josh atop "Griz"

My Dad and his horse "Jess"

Finally me and the Montana born "Hopper"

Here is a shot of Dylan on his horse "Cowboy" and the mule "Old Tom" that carried our stove, tools and snow shovels. The shovels are for clearing the trail if the snow has drifted over and the horses or mules can't pass.

The first leg of our trip ended with a stop at Eagle Lake camp to pick up the stove that would keep us warm for the week. Here are the horses tied up while we loaded the stove onto Old Tom.

Eagle Lake from the trail

This is a close up of Old Tom.

Now we had everything and were on our way to "North Fork" camp. Due to the snow and the fact that our tent never got set up at our planned camp, we were headed for a three wall cabin that was constructed in the 40's as part of president FDR's "New Deal". The cabin was about two miles from our original camp so all of our planning and maps were still useful.

Another shot of Dylan on a switchback ahead of me. You soon learn that there are only two directions in this country, up or down...and it's all steep.

More shots of the trail in to camp.........

After about six hours in the saddle, we arrived at camp.

We performed a few blue tarp "renovations" to the cabin and settled in.....Home Sweet Home!!

Now this is really my wife's blog so I will not defile it with actual hunting talk. The problem is that we spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday climbing all over the mountains around camp. We would leave camp around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning and get back an hour or two before dark. We saw nothing! No deer, no tracks, no signs of deer beds, nothing!! No real hunting to talk about!

However here is what I did see.....enjoy the views, however pictures never do it justice.

Surprise Lake

Muleshoe Meadow

Now 4 days into the trip it's late Monday. I was coming back to camp after checking out the area around Surprise Lake when Josh reports on the radio that he had cut several fresh tracks in a basin below Bernice Lake. We made a plan to head into that basin Tuesday morning. We spent all of Tuesday covering this new area. Josh and I cut several tracks that all looked to be made in the last few days, but no deer. Josh could have easily climbed the two miles and 2000 feet of elevation to the Bernice area every day we were there. That's because Josh is 50% mountain goat and 50% robot. I am neither. I quickly decide that I will make the trek only one more time and since we had already planned to do a "spike camp", this was the perfect time. Wednesday morning we all packed our sleeping bags, a small tent, clothes, etc and headed up to Bernice to set up the spike camp.
Here is Bernice Lake and yes, that is ice on the lake.

Josh and my dad around the camp fire.
My dad and I in the two man tent, and Josh in the one man bivy. Tight quarters!!

Around 2:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday, Josh radios in that he had jumped a deer. He was not a trophy, but at this point our standards had come down considerably. Josh went ahead and harvested the deer, and my dad and I brought out the pack boards to haul the meat back to camp.

Dinner that night at spike camp was fresh grouse, trout and venison cooked right on the camp fire coals. So tasty!!

We got up Wednesday morning before the sun, but the fog had also rolled in during the night along with a fresh layer of snow. We hunted all morning, but the visability was never more than a hundred yards and walking up and down the steep slopes with a fresh layer of snow was a bit defeating. Finally around noon we decided to break camp. The fog was still heavy and if we got another deer we would certianly have to make two trips to get all of the equipment and meat back to our main camp. As it was, our packs averaged around 60lbs for the snowy trek back to camp. Thankfully it was downhill 90% of the way.