I love being outside and doing a variety of activities in the outdoors! Hunting, fishing, and building things are just a few of my North Idaho childhood favorites! At the end of the day, it makes you feel so fulfilled and accomplished. Though, the most memorable wilderness experiences I’ve had were probably all the days I’ve gotten to spend in the woods by my house in the Cabinet Mountains hunting and hiking. I was born and raised here, being in the woods every day. I have logged many miles bushwhacking, but nothing like what I ran into this last November.
I was hiking from the top of Dry Creek drainage, where we left my pickup truck. Hiking up and over the ridge through Forest Service land, all the way to my house …. We were hunting for white tail bucks! My dad told me that there was a small trail to follow most of the way, from what he remembers when he and my mom hiked it. But what my dad failed to mention is that, 20 years ago was the last time that they hiked that area.
Early on in our adventure, we discovered that there was certainly not a trail. Everything was very overgrown. We both had hunting packs and our rifles on our backs, and we ended up having to crawl through several spots that were completely grown shut. There were a few game trails that we followed which helped us navigate the terrain. The animals had made a switchback trail through one part of the steep mountain side. This made things a little easier … until the trail ended! Then it was back to climbing over down trees and crawling through lots of underbrush. All the while, we were trying to stay quiet, hopeful to sneak up on a big buck. While trying to make our way through, we definitely weren’t sneaking up on anything!
We finally made it to the top and it was getting dark, so we quickly started making our way down with two old flashlights. Based on the timeline it took my parents to make the trip 20 or so years ago, we weren’t expecting our hunting trip to go into the late evening! It took a while, but we made the trip down without a trail and on wet mossy covered sharp rocks. The only wildlife that we saw on the whole trip was one squirrel, who was also eventually scared off by all the bushwacking.
When we finally got back to the driveway in the pitch black, there were three deer nestled down in our field for the night… who probably laughing at us for what we just went through to see nothing but that one squirrel. We came up empty handed that hunting trip, and it was definitely the hardest hike I’ve ever done! However, I was excited to go back out the next weekend for another adventure. A couple of weeks after that trip, I was out hunting again and harvested my biggest buck yet! After that big adventure in November, it made the reward that much better.
Piper is a graduating Senior from Clark Fork High School. They submitted this essay for FSPW’s high school scholarship contest. Stay tuned for more winning essays from students across Idaho and Montana.
