An Idaho Hunting Adventure
A couple of weeks ago a made a trip to Idaho to do a mule deer hunt with my friends (Ted Weinand & Cindy Thompson) who live in Bliss, Idaho about 10 miles outside of Gooding, Idaho. I flew into Boise, Idaho on the October 17, Ted and Cindy were there to pick me up. The drive to Bliss takes about 1:30 minutes from Boise. I would be there until November 1. After spending a nice quiet night we got ready in the morning to head out to our camp that Ted had already set up. We would be heading to a place called Fairfield and hunting in an area called Little Beaver. Beside hunting for mule deer Ted had also drawn a Bull elk tag. It took an 1:45 minutes to drive out to the hunting area. The weather was beautiful like Indian summer. The weather stayed like that most of the time I was there. Early the next morning we went out in Ted’s Cub Cab and did some scouting. At camp we had a Razor and a Cub Cab to hunt with. These off road vehicles maybe small but are amazing where they can go. The first two days we stayed low didn’t see much game although we covered a lot of territory. The deer and elk were there we just weren’t seeing them yet. If there was some snow we would have been able to start seeing a few more often. This time of year is when the mule deer start to rut. If it’s real cold they’ll start cutting sooner. On the third day we decided to go up high, looks like more deer was up high since there was more pressure down low. Not sure what the altitude was but we were up pretty high. It was about 5 pm we came upon this draw that had a few bucks and does feeding. Ted took out his spotting scope and was able to spot some pretty nice bucks feeding in the draw. After looking them over we decided to put a stalk on a buck that looked pretty good. When we first spotted the buck and does they were about 450 yds. away below us. We circled around and got within 200 yds. below us. There were just sagebrush between us and the deer. I tried to set my Harris Bipod up in the process the does heard and started to move further away down the draw with the buck in tow. Ted had a nice Swarovski binoculars with a range finder. Ted started calling out the yardage to me when the buck was at 346 yds I was able to settle on him and get a shot off as he continued down the draw. I heard the bullet hit him good, I was using my 300 RUM with a 180 gr. bullet. The deer staggered then fell. There were a couple other bucks across the draw that did not run Ted was able to get off a shot at one and dropped it in its tracks. After waiting a bit Cindy and I hiked down into the draw Ted drove the Cub Cab down into the draw. I’m glad the Cub Cab could get down there the bucks had very large bodies we’ll over 250 lbs.
The buck I shot was a real nice typical 4×4 mule deer buck, heavy rack nice and dark brown with long tines. It’ll look great with my other bucks when it’s done. Ted’s buck was nice but he was hunting for meat, it was a smaller 4×4 buck but a big body. After taking care of our deer we didn’t start heading out of the draw until almost 8:30 pm. Although it was a little steep getting out the Cub Cab made it out after a few tries. Due to the weight I hiked out of the draw using my flashlight. It started to snow when we started out of the draw we finally got back to camp around 10 pm. We had a great day and I got a real nice buck. The next day we hunted a different area, an area where I had missed a big buck last year. After hunting the area several hours Ted spotted a buck that was bedded down in a spot that was very hard to see. Ted got out his spotting scope and started to get pretty excited. Ted told Cindy to get ready, the buck was over 350 yds. away but Ted knew he could get closer with the Cub Cab. Ted and Cindy headed out as I stayed back to watch. Ted got Cindy within a170 yds. the buck didn’t try to escape I think the buck felt he was hidden well. Ted made out the direction the buck was lying and told Cindy where to aim. When Cindy fired she shot the buck right in its neck, it’s head just dropped. When we hiked up to where it laid it turn out to be a nice big buck with a cool drop tine, Cindy was stoked it was her first real trophy buck. With 3 bucks down in two days everything was going great. The next day we went out looking for an Elk for Ted. We spent the day hunting in an area where the elk usually come out of the forest in the evening and move down into the pasture area and spend the night feeding them moving back into the forest before sunrise. It wasn’t til later in the afternoon that we found a good area where the elk were traveling through. Ted wanted to be dropped off in this one area and hopefully catch them moving out of the forest. After dropping Ted off we headed down below to wait for him in an area close to the pasture where we found signs of them crossing. It wasn’t more than twenty minutes after dropping him off we spotted a spike with a bunch of chores running down towards the pasture. My first thought was that Ted got busted, we contacted him and found out that he had shot a bull elk. So we headed back up to where Ted was, evidently after dropping Ted off a herd of elk were no more than 70 yds. from him. There was 3 bulls along with a bunch of cow’s. Ted saw a 6×6 standing in some trees, there was a nice 5×5 bull with it but decided to take the other bull. After taking the shot the bull ran a few yards, that’s when Ted noticed the bull had broken off one side in a fight. The bull was missing the upper portion, it would have been a nice big 6×6. The bull that broke his rack must have been pretty big since his rack had some mass. Ted was a little disappointed but what the hell that’s hunting. The freezer was going to full of meat for awhile. Ted and I spent the rest of the day loading the elk into the Cub Cab. I was amazed how such a huge animal was not that difficult to load using the winch that was mounted on the front. After getting back to camp we decided to head back to Gooding to drop the elk off at the butcher so we loaded up the Cub Cab on the trailer with the elk still on the Cub Cab. What a hunt the last 3 days turned out to be, you couldn’t ask for a happier ending. Idaho is a fantastic place to hunt I’ll be looking forward to it once again. I thank the Lord for having such good friends.