Bearpaw Season - Fall 2021

[bearpaw]

This fall we've had a mixed bag of success, some of our hunting has gone very well but some hunts have been very tough due to various factors. Nonetheless we still managed to fill some tags and get a few good animals. John dropped this bull on the first day of his Washington hunt with Daniel.

[bearpaw]

Chad from Texas nailed this buck on the last day of his Idaho mule deer hunt with Russell.

[pianoman9701]

Awesome animals, Dale.

[bearpaw]

Even though our September archery elk hunters had a lot of shot opportunities our October rifle season was very tough, here’s one of the rifle season bulls taken this year.

[bearpaw]

Washington Whitetail season is obviously another tough season this year, going into season we knew it was going to be tough because of the blue tongue die off. We’ve actually found dead heads from several of the better bucks, it seemed to impact older bucks more. We turned away most of the hunters who contacted us this fall wanting to hunt. We figured we had enough hunters already booked for the amount of bucks we are seeing now. Our first hunt went well with 5 hunters taking 5 bucks the first day of their hunt and our second hunt went equally as well with 4 hunters taking 4 bucks. I’m really hoping our last hunt goes as well?

Photo from first day of 1st hunt:

[Machias]

Awesome Dale!

[bearpaw]

Washington Whitetail
Our last group hunting now are mostly long time repeat hunters, one guy decided to postpone his hunt till next year due to the blue tongue die off, the majority said they are coming anyway even if they don't get deer, this is their vacation, they just enjoy coming. So far all have had shot opportunists at small bucks that they passed, and a few guys either missed or didn't quite get shots at bigger bucks, but this group is letting the smaller bucks have another year to grow, this is the last day of season so I'm hoping they get one or two of the bigger bucks they've seen.

Kind of crazy, all the guys were out hunting and the wife looks out the front of the house at her car and there is a 4x4 buck standing in the driveway behind her car a couple days ago! 

Idaho Moose
Our last moose hunter nailed a nice bull on his second hunt day. Guides Russell and Brook took the horses and rode Jonas several miles in a gated area and then rode into some canyon areas where they had seen some bulls earlier in the season, they saw 5 cows and then they rode up on a bull that took off running, it had wide paddles and plenty of points, by the time the Jonas had dismounted and got on his shooting sticks the bull had made out to well over 400 yards, but Jonas was up to the task and made the shot. This was about 4pm, then the work started, and then they had a really long ride back out, they never got back until 1am and were totally whipped. Jonas said this was a hunt he would never forget and that several of his friends would be applying for the tag to come and moose hunt with us, I attached a photo of Jonas' bull.

[bearpaw]

If anyone is wondering, the bull had testes but they were very small, I doubt they were functional, thus the likely reason he had not rubbed clean. Through the years we have taken many velvet bucks late in the hunting season, in every case those bucks did not have testes and apparently lacked the drive to rub their antlers.

[bearpaw]

Last year Bridger got one of our best bucks of the season, this year his brother Remington hunted with us. Many of the bucks seen by our hunters this year were young bucks, despite the unusually tough hunting season and all the smaller bucks that were seen, Jake and Remington found a nice buck that Remington tagged the first week of deer season. Congrats to Remington for getting this great buck!

[bearpaw]

A Montana mule buck taken recently.

[bearpaw]

Another fall turkey hunt, we have an absolute ton of birds, if nothing crazy happens this winter the upcoming spring season is going to be really good again! This year was a record breaker for us, the most birds we've ever taken.

[bearpaw]

A big cow taken this fall, we didn’t find many bulls during the bull elk season but the we were on the elk pretty good during most of the cow season.

[bearpaw]

Cougar season is open in part of our areas and the rest open December 1st. The only problem is we don’t have good snow conditions yet. I’ve had to postpone some of the cougar hunts until we have better hunting conditions.

Unfortunately a couple hunters had to cancel until next year due to tight work schedules.I guarantee our cougar hunts, so if our hunters don’t get a cat or pass cats, they get to hunt again for half price.

So we have a couple cougar hunts available if anyone is wanting a cougar hunt.

I’m really anxious to chase cats again!

[bearpaw]

Finally had an opportunity to lion hunt today, there wasn’t much snow but when Tyson stopped to let the dogs stretch he stopped in just the right spot by accident and the dogs picked up a cold trail which turned out to be a nice tom, congrats to Tom from Iowa on his well placed arrow.

[2MANY]

I like the looks of that.