Hunting for Harmony with Tom Schneider

Tracks Don’t Lie

In the Idaho backcountry, Tom Schneider found a moose carcass last spring with antlers still velvet, belly torn open, scattered across a logging cut. It was wolves. He recognized their work, jaws like traps, and no meat wasted. He had seen this before too many times. But the radio out of Boise said wolves weren’t the problem. According to them, it was due to ticks and mild winters.

As Tom continued to hunt and look for tracks, he found nothing. No moose prints, no scat, no sign of the bulls that used to roam the woods. The “experts” called it a cycle, they said the moose were just “on edge.” But the tracks don’t lie and neither do empty trails.

We discussed this in our recent podcast episode below

The Silence Left Behind

It wasn’t always quiet. As a kid, Tom and his brother would hike these mountains and pick up moose antlers by the dozen. Sometimes he found twenty paddles in a single draw, big bulls wintering in the brush, cows and calves trailing behind. Elk too, herds so thick you’d hear them bugling from miles away. The trails were worn deep, packed by hooves.

Now, two years after the wolves came, it’s different. The brush fields are empty, wallows dried to mud. He stood on a ridge just last fall, glassing a basin that used to hum with life. Not a track, not a call. Just the wind. The wolves didn’t just kill, they erased and took the moose, the elk, and the rhythm of the place with them.

Doing the Work

Tom didn’t wait for answers, he hunted. Wolves specifically, with six taken from one drainage over a season. He hunted mountain lions too, one treed on a logged plot with eyes like lanterns. That plot was his pride: private land he’d helped clear, seeded with clover, spaced for deer, moose, and elk to browse. Six years ago it was a graveyard with wolves and other big cats choking it out.

Now it’s alive again. Whitetails run around at dusk, groups of fifty or more some nights. Elk bugle in the draws. Hunting the predators for Tom wasn’t revenge, it was his duty. Nature doesn’t fix itself when you tip the scales. You step in or you lose what’s left. Tom learned that young, watching his dad pack out elk, knowing the mountains demand your hands get dirty.

What You See

No moose came back to that drainage last spring. Tom walked it anyway, rifle slung, eyes on the ground. No tracks, still. The wolves are fewer now, he’s seen to that, but the damage sticks with us. The experts keep talking about ticks or weather. He doesn’t listen, he never did. What you see with your own eyes, that’s what’s real.

It’s humbling, standing in a silent basin, knowing you can’t force the herds back. You hunt, you manage, you pray for balance, but the mountains move on their own time. Same as life. Things break, moose vanish, plans crumble, and the truth sometimes gets buried. You do what you can, trust what’s true, and leave the rest to something bigger.

Tom calls it stewardship.