Name: Sawtooth Wilderness Outfitters
Address: Grandjean, Idaho

About Sawtooth Wilderness Outfitters

Spot & StalkBackcountryCallingMule DeerElkBlack BearWolfRainbow TroutMountain Lion

Sawtooth Wilderness Outfitters runs out of Grandjean, Idaho, on the south fork of the Payette River at the edge of the Sawtooth Wilderness.

Grandjean has been an outfitting address for a century. Cougar "Babe" Hanson packed and guided out of it from 1922 and established it as a hunting lodge in 1927, and three generations of Locketts and two generations of Allreds followed her. Darl Allred and his son Cody ran SWO for nearly thirty years before handing it to the current team.

SWO refuse to work one fixed camp. They move with horses and mules between multiple backcountry camps and a front-country cabin base at Grandjean, so a hunt can chase the animals instead of the infrastructure. Backcountry camps are wall tents, cots and wood stoves; the Grandjean cabins have a bed, a shower and internet; and ultralight tents go in when the hunt demands country neither will reach.

They are explicit about what they will and will not promise: "Unlike guaranteed trophy hunts, we believe in the intrinsic value of earned success." They control the food, the guides, the stock and the camps, and they do not claim to control the weather or the animals.

The year runs bear in late spring, pack trips and trail rides all summer, elk and deer through the fall, and wolf and mountain lion through the winter. Alongside the multi-day trips they run basecamp trail rides from half an hour to a full day, one-hour horsemanship lessons, and a spot pack service that will haul your gear into the backcountry on mules. Sacajawea Hot Springs and the Sawtooth Lodge, their sister operation with cabins, yurts, a pool, a restaurant and a store, are next door.