Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness

And then, and then, you know, the community and how small and tight knit of a place it is.

We're nestled right against the Frank Church Wilderness Area, and we're right smack dab in the middle of Pocatello and Missoula, Montana.

We're kind of right there on the...

West of Yellowstone, but just south of Missoula, Montana.

It's like they say the same thing about the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana.

And they say the same thing about the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho.

And yeah, I think maybe you've heard it for more than one place in Wyoming.

And so I'm like, I don't even know.

Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, that's where I like to hunt.

Places like the Frank Church River and Overturn Wilderness.

The Sawtooths and, you know, the various millions of acres of national forests I'm blessed to be surrounded by.

I like to hunt all kinds of stuff, but what I can generally get tags for is mule deer, whitetail deer, and elk.

The Middle Fork Salmon River Basin is an important spawning area for wild Chinook salmon in Idaho.

Much of the basin lies within the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, where streams remain largely untouched and provide high quality habitat for spawning.

Unlike many salmon populations throughout the Pacific Northwest, Chinook salmon in the Middle Fork Range are entirely wild.

No hatchery fish have been released into this basin, making it a unique place for biologists to study naturally produced salmon and track population trends over time.

Right.

If you don't wanna be around someone, ju- just go out to the Frank Church Wilderness or something like that and, [laughs] you know?

[laughs]

There's so much, much more vast wilderness spaces with s- far fewer people to go do your thing.

But it is the farthest away spot from any road or airstrip in the Lower 48.

So there are, you know, there's, um, like the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho is a massive stretch of wilderness, but there's also a bunch of airstrips peppered about throughout it.

So while it may in some ways feel really remote or maybe even seem like it should be more remote, the Thoroughfare is, is in fact this farthest.

If you drew a line from any road or airstrip, it is the farthest away from any of them that you can get.

I've hunted in Africa with a scout rifle four or five times.

I've hunted out west, Frank Church Wilderness with a scout rifle, down in Texas, New Mexico.

And it wasn't all because that was my choice.

I wanted to see if he was right.

But there's just something after spending 10 years researching this scout rifle, trying to figure out whether Cooper knew what he was talking about or not.

There's just something inside me that would make it almost impossible for me to not have a scout rifle in my, I just, I mean, I've used them in Africa.

I took it in the Frank Church wilderness and shot a black bear.

The elk I shot in New Mexico was 328 yards with a scout rifle.

They staked all the land to the west of, um, Stibnite.

The land to the east, there's no land to stake because it's in a something called the Frank Church Wilderness Area, and you can't put claims out there.

But the land to the west of Stibnite, they went and picked up this fifteen thousand acres.

And the guys at Stibnite, they were like, "What are you doing? You got nothing there.