There is not lots of burns in the Lolo units and its quite the opposite. Ive talked to wolf bios and other bios in the unit and a huge problem with the lolo is the vegetation has grown up so much limiting elk feed and lack of fires creating openings and more feed.The 3 bios I have talked to all said there needs to be more fires and bigger fires. There hasnt been a sizeable fire in lolo in quite some time the only fires they have gotten of recent is little spot fires which adds up to nothing. Much of the units is so remote that logging is not a option. The forest is not healthy in many parts. Fires dont start and spread here easily due to tons of snow in the mountains clear into July. The mountains get sizeable thunderstorms quite often soaking the mountains in the summer and fall coupled with cool temps in the dead of summer makes fires hard to come by. I have spent alot of time in these mountains over the past several years.
I would not call this place a high black bear density or even close! Example: last summer to Oct 10 I got 40,000+ trail cam pics and 2 of them were bears. If this were other parts of N ID or NE WA I'd have thousands of bear pics. Wolves are plentiful , but very hard to actually get shots. I had a pack of 14 living on 1 cam all summer.
Is there elk? sure is and I am highly successful there, but for every guy that is successful there is 40-60 hunters who are not. Every drainage looks like elk heaven, but you will soon find out you can go drainage after drainage and be void of elk and can become very depressing and mentally challenging. Then add in huge country places so thick with deadfalls you can go crazy...confidence goes fast. My wife and I first year hunting this unit we decided to drive a road on a atv to cut tracks in fresh snow and glass to just locate elk and make a plan. Well day 1 found us with 38 miles on the Atv 1! single elk track and 0 elk spotted and things were very discouraging. These roads are not heavily traveled either by people, some roads have 2-4 camps over 20 miles
Weather is a major factor here and more so with rifle hunts. It has ruined more hunts here than not.Problem with the road system here is you are following the river valleys in most of the unit then you have to head up and these roads heading up get bad. Last year alone Oct 10 weather made a drastic change and we spent 6 days packing a elk and trying to remove 2 camps, cutting out 27 fallen trees in the road and 12-18" of snow. Year before it snowed 5" then was in single digits on opener. Traveling some of these roads up on mountains is treacherous in places once it snows. Plan on having chains and a saw for wind storms and falling trees. After Oct 17 none of the high country was accessible and almost everyone was on the main road on the clearwater as it snowed 14" more.
Hunting these units Id look at as a 3 year investment minimum with scouting and hunting to learn and find elk spots. Going in blind and new you will have extremely low % chance of taking a bull. Id only hunt here if you are committed to learning it and continuing to hunt it.
