David Thompson Country

West of Nordegg the foothills roll up into the Blackstone and Wapiabi country, a stretch of Alberta backcountry that is closed to motorized vehicles. That single rule is what keeps it the kind of place you have to earn: no trucks, no quads, just horses and boots.

Horseback and foot only

The Blackstone and Wapiabi Forest Land Use Zone prohibits motorized vehicles, so hunts here are run with a horse string, packing into wall-tent camps and hunting on foot from there. It is more work than a road-based hunt, and that is the point: the country stays quiet, the animals stay wild, and the trip feels like the hunts people picture when they picture the mountains.

Where it is

Our camp is a set of cabins at the Blackstone and Wapiabi river junction, northwest of Nordegg, about 3.5 hours from both the Calgary and Edmonton airports. From there the hunt goes deeper on horseback. See pack trips and wall-tent life for what the camp side is like, and backcountry cabins for the base.

Who hunts here

This is our country: bighorn sheep, moose, elk, mule and whitetail deer, black bear and wolf, hunted the traditional way in a zone that has carried an outfitting tradition for more than a hundred years.