Using GoogleEarth I input "N 43 57.980 W 116 11.362" and it went straight to Ponderosa Sports on the North Fork Payette River.

I don't participate in SAR but I have been involved in air navigation using the lat/long format (vice UTM which I am vaguely familiar with but have never used) for 35 years. Degrees & decimal minutes seems to be the default format and is what I use daily. We can figure out decimal degrees or degrees/minutes/seconds as long as it's clear what format is being used; the format difference is just arithmatic. Given a location in decimal degrees the first thing I'd do is translate that to degrees & decimal minutes so it would be in a format I am used to seeing. Most pilots I know (and I know quite a few) are very comfortable with degrees and decimal minutes.