HD 293 takes in the country immediately around and west of Wisdom in the upper Big Hole Valley—a high, broad sagebrush basin walled in by the Bitterroot Range to the west and the Pintler-Anaconda divide to the north. Elevations run from about 6,200 feet on the Big Hole River near Wisdom up to over 10,000 feet on the Bitterroot divide and the Pintler peaks. The valley is open: native bunchgrass, sage flats, irrigated hay meadows, willow river bottom along the Big Hole and its tributaries (Steel Creek, Trail Creek, Twin Lakes Creek). The Big Hole Battlefield—where the Nez Perce broke the Army in 1877—sits right in the middle of this country, a sober context for any hunt out here. Climb the rims and you hit lodgepole and Douglas fir, then spruce-fir and alpine. Mule deer and pronghorn use the open valley; elk move down out of the rim country in late season; moose live the willow bottoms; whitetail in the cottonwood corridors. Beaverhead-Deerlodge NF on the rims, BLM scattered through, and significant private ranch ground (the Hirschys, the Hagenbarths, others—old Big Hole cattle outfits) on the valley floor. MT-43 east-west, MT-278 over Big Hole Pass, the Trail Creek Road climbing west toward the Bitterroot crest. Wisdom is the only town—gas, the Conoco that closes early, the Antlers Saloon, a diner. Dillon is south an hour, Butte east 90 minutes. Cell service is thin in Wisdom and gone everywhere else. Block Management opens up access on some valley ranches; the public ground on the rims is yours but it's a climb. Winters are brutal here—Wisdom holds the cold-temp record for Montana more years than not. Pack accordingly.