STANLEY, Idaho (AP) - Miserable, shivering and hungry, a 53-year-old hunter who'd lost his way in the wilds of Idaho hunkered down for five nights hoping searchers would find him before finally wandering out of the snowy forest on his own.

Bill Helfferich, of the Boise suburb of Eagle, says he was surrounded by a howling pack of wolves at one point during his ordeal in the rugged Sawtooth Mountains south of this remote central Idaho outpost near the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.

The first night was one of the worst.

"I shivered the whole night long," Helfferich told the Idaho Statesman.

He kept busy by collecting firewood and snow to melt, hoping he wouldn't share the same fate as 24-year-old Jon Francis of Minnesota, who wandered into the same mountainous area in July and hasn't been seen since.

Helfferich set out on a two-day solo elk hunt Oct. 15. But several hours after parking his truck, he took a wrong turn. Then he found himself in an area not covered by his topographical map - and snow began falling.

After trying to find his way back to charted territory, he decided to wait out the storm, hoping to be found by rescuers. He figured they would be on his trail when he didn't return to his family near Boise, some 120 miles to the south, as scheduled.

As time passed, searchers including Custer County Sheriff's Deputy Levi Maydole said they shifted their focus to body recovery.

"Day three was hopeful, but we had to start thinking of the inevitable here," Maydole said. "On day four, hopes begin to drain off. On day five, we don't expect to find people in those conditions at that time of year in that wilderness."

Helfferich says he was so hungry by Thursday he started eating snowballs to silence the nagging emptiness in his belly. There were some tiny pine squirrels at his campsite, and occasionally he would think of using his rifle.

"I … decided I wasn't that hungry yet," he said.

By Friday he'd decided help wasn't coming, so he opted to try to slog out of the woods on his own. By the time he reached some pine-beetle researchers who took him by truck to Stanley later that day, Helfferich figures he'd covered about 24 miles altogether.

After throwing a pizza party for the Custer County search team, he returned home Saturday, saying he was looking forward to spending a quiet afternoon in his living room.