Zone 8A breaks off the larger Zone 8 country and centers on the upper Lolo Creek and Weitas drainages east of Pierce, country shaped by the 1910 Big Burn and re-shaped by every fire since. Elevations range from about 2,400 feet in the canyon bottoms to over 6,800 feet on the high benches. The slopes are a mosaic—mature cedar-hemlock-fir in the unburned pockets, brushy alder and ceanothus in the old burn scars, and lodgepole stringers wherever the fire ran hot. This is some of the best elk-habitat brushwork in the panhandle, but the brush is also why the unit eats hunters who arrive out of shape. Clearwater National Forest covers nearly all of it. Forest Road 250 (the North Fork road) and FR 247 are the spines, and from there a tangle of decommissioned and gated logging roads run up Weitas, Cayuse, and Pete King creeks. Many roads are gated October 1, which actually filters out the truck-cruisers. Pierce has fuel and a small store; Headquarters is a wide spot in the road; Orofino is the real supply town an hour west. Cell service is essentially zero. The country is steep and the brush will hide an elk at fifteen feet, so you hunt it slow and you hunt it close. Pack-out logistics are everything—killing an bull at the bottom of Cayuse Creek is a punishment you won't forget.