Owner selling Salmon River home and land: 120 acres near White Bird, Idaho.

For Sale WHIPSAW SADDLE RANCH THE LAND (120.5 acres with new home)
North side of Carlson property, from above on Doumecq Road
The property, approximately 3/4-mile long by 1/4-mile wide, straddles the dark ridge above Diamond Drill Canyon. From near the creek bottom, up over the ridge and about halfway down the other side, it occupies the full length of the picture. Whipsaw Saddle really does exist. In the right foreground, it's that low spot on the ridge—where the county road comes around the bend into the timber. The saddle area is a natural game crossing, providing frequent wildlife sightings.
The "knob," 150 yards from the house	The north slope of the ridge we live on is timbered—mostly ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. The lower part contains mixed trees and brushy habitat and the top and south slopes of the ridge are rangeland. The mix of cover, open areas and edges make this land prime habitat. We see mice to moose, badgers to bears and coyotes to cougars (even a pair of wolves). Whipsaw Saddle itself is a major game crossing and Diamond Drill Canyon is loaded.

Some 350 yards below the house lies a 6-8 acre pasture that was once a homesteader's hayfield. Nice black soil there. Out on this field we regularly see wild animals, including several bucks jousting and a small band of whitetails chasing two coyotes. On a hike down there, before we built the house, I found an old rusty horse-drawn plow and hauled it up onto the edge of our pad. It disappeared from there, only to mysteriously find its way back three years later.	Winter scene: pasture area and beyond.
Finishing the fence	Inspecting the Fence
In addition to site developments like the well, driveway and tree plantings—and the half-mile of fencing that I put in—we've concentrated on improving the pad area around the house. Both of us work part time so it is an ongoing and rewarding project. Since installing a drip system I no longer have to carry water for the trees I planted. The apple and cherry trees bore for the first time this year, and Jane's raised-bed gardens yield vegetables and flowers from May through October.

The garden brings up another subject. Deer are a joy to have around, and a fat-free addition to our diet, but they can be a pain in the butt if you don't practice a little acceptance. That is, if you don't accept the fact that deer will eventually eat everything you plant if you don't cage it until big enough to resist browsing or become unattractive to them. Deer hit the lawn every night after things dry up in August, although they don't seem to hurt it. We consider it small sacrifice to cage our domestic plants and gladly share everything else with the deer.

Last year about 40 acres of the lower property was reseeded, including the pasture area mentioned above. The work, done by helicopter, and a wet spring produced an outstanding result—no weeds and a bumper crop of grass.

Visiting daughter & Gus on new pasture

Several local operators build trails. To make more of our property available to horses and hiking, I've got a 3/4-mile trail segment marked out that would go from our gate down through the timbered area and out onto the pasture below the house. It would continue around the open areas, to be part of a 2-mile trail system that would include a wide variety of the most magnificent scenes you can imagine.

I'm not a horseman but I delight in hiking the land with Jane and/or Gus. While I expect to keep on doing that, a 4-wheeler finally showed up to fill the bay in my shed, so I can now reach the full length of the property more quickly and do any heavy work I wish.

Commercial Opportunities
For our part, we've just enjoyed being here. However, this was once a working cattle ranch, so the non-timbered areas of the land (60-70%) are grazeable and much of that was reseeded this year. About 50 acres is fenced. The pasture mentioned above once produced hay for a homesteader. It is accessible from the house area, and water could be available to it for nursery stock or whatever a person wanted to grow in the rich black soil there. All manner of wildlife use the area now, which provides continuous entertainment from our vantage point at the house.

We have considered two other enterprises on our land. Probably would have done at least one of them if we didn't need to sell. This property would make a fine gamefarm for chukar, pheasant etc. And there are several unparalleled sites for "solitude cabins," where renters could spend a week or more without seeing another human being. The deep quiet and unrestricted canyon views fit right in with the newly popular concept of solitude vacations. And the Internet does the selling.


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