Hunter’sAlmanac North Central Idaho
OCTOBER 2015
Clearwater Region
PHOTO COURTESY ROBERT MILLAGE, KAMIAH ID
Great land, wide open Few places on the planet are much more than a day’s travel away from Earth’s biggest cities, but the remote parts of North Central Idaho are far off the beaten paths that criss-cross the contiguous United States. That makes this area a boon to anyone who wants to get away from the cities for a spell. An Englishman could jump on a flight out of Heathrow but would find it difficult to put himself much more than 24 hours away from a major city. Even a rock star with airfare to spare — say, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger — would need about as much time to get from London to Lewiston by jet plane as it’d take him to tour Hells Canyon Dam by jet boat. And that’s the point: covering great distance at high speed separates a person from the modern world far less than a walk in the woods. • Though deeper woods than those of the Nez PerceClearwater National Forests can hardly be found in the Lower 48, easy access is a large part of the Clearwater Region’s appeal. Two local game units — 8A and 10A — reliably feature among the state’s most hunting ground. The thirdlargest whitetail deer harvest in Idaho history went off last year, and both of
these units — which neighbor Dworshak Reservoir — ranked in the state’s top five. Unit 16 — which includes the lower part of the Selway River drainage — posted the state’s highest deer hunting success rate (55 percent) with more than 600 tagged by fewer than 1,200 hunters. By the same measure, four other units in the region were among the state’s top performers in 2014. Unit 8 and Unit 11A are mainly agricultural with large
proportions of private land. In Unit 15, which surrounds Elk City, deer hunters reported success at a rate of nearly 45 percent. Also ranking in the Top 10 by deer hunting success rate was Unit 11. South of Lewiston, it is home to one of the Gem State’s crown jewels: the Craig Mountain Wildlife Management Area. Craig Mountain totals 140,000 acres open to public recreation; the Idaho Department of Lands manages
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78,000 accessed by the roads to Soldiers Meadow Reservoir and Lake Waha. August saw a record fire season strike the region, and area closures in Units 10, 12, 14, 15 and 20 may disrupt hunting. • We left Mick Jagger on a boat farther to the south, in Snake River country above the Salmon River confluence. Unit 13 is a mostly-private riddle of canyons southwest of Cottonwood and due west of White Bird. The Forest Service manages land on both sides of the Unit 18 boundary at Pittsburg Landing; farther south, the ground is mostly public and includes nearly 58,000 acres of wilderness. The archery hunter who draws a Unit 18 elk tag has a chance to tag one v e r y large bull. It’s a different story in the Lolo Zone (Units 10 and 12) and the Selway Zone (Units 16A, 17, 19 and 20). Last year, hunters b o u g h t fewer than 900 general season deer tags and fewer than 700 general season elk tags for the two Lolo Zone units, and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game announced plans to boost elk numbers there through wolf control and habitat work.