Delia D'Ambra

A deputy with the Owyhee County Sheriff's Office told the press that Claude Dallas Jr.

wasn't your ordinary poacher.

He was armed, dangerous, and had expert knowledge of the landscape in which he'd carried out the killings.

The 30-year-old was described by many folks as a loner with survivalist skills who didn't like being around people.

He would spend most winters by himself in the desert living off the land, and when the weather got warmer, he took truck driving jobs or worked at farms to make ends meet.

One article I read by Steven Anderson and Mark Crane for the Idaho Statesman explained that Claude had lived along the Idaho-Nevada border for about 10 years prior to the murders.

So the dude knew it like the back of his hand.

A deputy even went as far as characterizing Claude as a self-professed mountain man who had a lot of experience in the outdoors.

George Nielsen's brother told the Idaho statesman in part, quote, Claude's lived the kind of life most of us only wish we could live.

He knows the cowboy life.

He knows about open country and taking care of himself.

He's an educated guy.

How many men do you know who could winter alone out on that desert and survive?

End quote.

Inside a trailer Claude had in Paradise Hill, authorities found a bunch of books about fashioning gun silencers, combat, ammunition, and survival skills.

And they later learned that in October of 1980, a few months before the murders, he'd purchased an AR-15 automatic rifle and a canoe in Sandpoint, Idaho.

The gun was accounted for at his trailer, but the canoe was not.

And it also wasn't among his belongings at his trapping compound, which prompted officials to suspect that he'd probably hidden it somewhere and was likely using it to evade capture and stay off the land where he could be more easily tracked.

UPI News unearthed an old issue of National Geographic Society's magazine, The American Cowboy in Life and Legend, which featured two-color photos of a much younger Claude living his best cowboy life at a ranch in Paradise Valley, which I think only further cemented the image of him being a well-equipped person who could survive in the harsh landscape.

So in light of all that information, investigators strongly suspected Claude would be very difficult to find in Idaho and Nevada's remote terrain.