Idaho Muley

[agchawk]

Great buck!

I'll be hunting Idaho starting this weekend. Sure hope I bring something home like that!

[bucklucky]

Congrats on the buck and welcome to the site!

[sk]

Here is the story. We got to camp Sunday afternoon after setting up camp we decided to head up the hill for a look around. My season didn't open until Monday morning so it would just be a scouting trip. We didn't want to bump any deer so we figured we would just go up and glass the basins and see what we could see. It was about a twenty minute motorcycle ride up to the area we would be hunting and that turned out to be tougher then the rest of the days on foot. We parked the bikes with about two hours of day light left and headed up the first ridge. When we got to the top of the ridge we located several small bucks and decided just to sit down and see if anything else came out, we sat there for about an hour when suddenly a nice big four point walked out. After looking at him for awhile I decided if I could get a shot at him in the morning I would be glad to fill my tag on the first day. We slipped off the ridge undetected by the bucks and made our way off the hill. I didn't get much sleep that night thinking of that big old buck up on the hill. Finally my alarm went off and we headed up the hill in the dark. After nearly killing myself several times we finally made it to the top. We parked the bikes in the same location and headed up the ridge. We made the top of the ridge just as the sun started to come up. That's when I was reminded that it was a public land hunt, because just coming up the ridge from the other side were two other guys. We stopped and talked to them and as it turned out they had planned on hunting the same basin we had planned on. So they went high we went low and about an hour after day light I heard a shot and the big buck was down. We made our way over to them and congratulated them on a fine deer and headed off cross country. Later that evening I missed a nice non typical which was a terrible way to end the first day. Tuesday turned out to be a day of looking at a lot of bucks but never saw anything that I wanted to take. So that brings me to Wednesday which is the day I killed this buck. Our day started out with a lot of motorcycle wrecks and a new area to hunt. We made our way across a couple of basins with out seeing hide nor hair of a deer, needless to say by mid morning I was really kicking myself for missing the non typical buck the first day. At about 11:00 we found ourselves looking over a huge basin that looked like good deer country and was it ever. While sitting there glassing we managed to locate 5 bucks and a couple of them looked like really nice ones. Problem was they were about 800 to 1000 yards off so we decided to get a closer look. On our way over to those bucks I looked down in the basin and saw a large four point looking up the hill at us. It didn't look like he would spook so we slipped around the back of the ridge and came out above him a little farther down the ridge. Keeping a large boulder between us we narrowed the gap to 300 yards, after locating the buck and his two buddies I started to get set up for the shot. That's when the guy I was with noticed to other bucks one being the one I shot sound asleep only 100 yards from us at the same elevation. Well here comes the big decision the bigger buck down the hill was starting to get restless and I was afraid that if I screwed around to much I would bump the two sleeping bucks and not get a shot at eather of the bucks. Since the buck a sleep at 100 yards was bigger than any buck I had ever shot I decided to take him. I took my pack off and laid down on some rocks and waited for the sleeping buck to wake up. I only laid there for about 5 minutes when the buck decided to get up and stretch, well that was all it took one shot at 100 yards and the buck was dead before he new what hit him. That afternoon I packed the head out and the next morning we went back up and boned him out on the hill, and that ended my long anticipated Idaho mule deer hunt.

[boneaddict]

Great hunt and animal.

[jstamp]

great story and buck, congrats

[Ryan]

Very nice buck. 

[robb92]

Congrats on the nice buck!! Thanks for posting the pics!!

[bowsandhose]

sweet 

[HornPorn]

Nice buck! sounds like you had a good hunt.  What elevation were you hunting?

[sk]

We hunted between 8500 and 9000 feet.

[alecvg]

Sounds awsome!

[Buckoholic]

Nice Buck Great story!! Thanks for making the rest of us cry!! We open in 4 days yee hah

[nwhunter]

So Shane I hear you have been waiting for me to get home from elk hunting to throw you a reply on your buck. Nice to see some good pics finally and no flies on that buck! Now enough of the nice talk lets hear how big that nontyp you missed was, sorry to bring that up again for you but I couldn't remember whether it was pushing 30" or was it even bigger than that??? And while you were putting up pics why not post the pics of all your bruises and blisters you got from being a soft desk jockey who jumped into a backcountry high country hunt out of shape and trying to ride a motorcycle when you can't hardly ride a peddlebike!! SO is this what you were waiting for? Scottie

[sk]

Thanks Scottie, I knew I could count on you to have something nice to say. If you want to talk about missing deer lets talk about the last time you went to Colorado.   

[nwhunter]

I've been killin' deer and missin' deer while you were still in diapers lad so lets move on!! Just razzing you , glad you got your buck and I will be happy to get one close to that big when we head to I daho in a few weeks. Good job and good night. nwhunter