Having been to Idaho now for the past 4 years chasing mule deer, I can tell you that the chase proves both mentally and physically exhausting at times. Year after year our relentless pursuit of finding good bucks has driven us into the steepest canyons and the nastiest terrain that Idaho has to offer. We have hiked numerous vertical miles and spent countless hours behind the glass in hopes of turning up some good bucks. Usually we are fortunate enough to find at least 1 good one to harvest, but never more than 1 in the same year.......until this year.
We arrived in camp following a decent cold snap to the Southwestern portion of Idaho. We spent our first 2 days covering different elevation ranges in order to determine where the deer were holding up this time of year. After realizing that the cold front had pushed a lot of deer out of the high country we began to hunt lower and lower in elevation until we finally found where the deer were staging. On day 2 we found a nice 3x3 buck in the spotter and after closer examination we noticed that his neck was swollen and he was pushing his female companions around the hill. What a fantastic surprise, we were coming up on the rut. This single buck observation altered our strategy immensely. Instead of trying to find a solo buck hidden amongst the terrain, we now just needed to find the doe's.
"Where's Billy": Day 3 brought on morning rain and fog in the middle range elevations, so we decided to go even lower to get underneath the fog layer and increase our visibility. After a 30 minute truck ride and a 45 minute motorcycle ride up the trail, we settled into a spot to glass a large basin. Within the first couple of hours we spotted quite a few deer along with a nice 4x4 bedded halfway across the basin with a handful of doe's. After moving a bit closer and getting a better look at the buck it was decided that we needed to go after him. The four of us came up with a plan for Kenny and I to make a stalk across the canyons and try to get into a shooting position. Fast forward 1.5 hours later and we are standing at the base of a small ridge covered in thick brush that is shielding the bucks last known location. Kenny asks, "What's the chance he's still there", I say50/50 at best. Now, 10 yards before the crest we shed our packs and crawled(literally) over the top. As we break the plane of the hill, our first look shows us nothing, no deer! What the heck. (50/50 I say in my head). Then out of the corner of my eye I see movement, and its close. I swing around in a sitting position and there is our buck trying to sneak back over the ridge less than a 100 yards from us. In auto pilot at this point, I steady my 25-06 and send one right through both lungs. Game over. Nice 22" 4x4 is down. I get on the radio and relay to my Dad and Bryan, "Billy is down". After snapping a few quick pictures with T-Rex and snow white (my good luck charms from the kids), the rest of the pack crew makes it way over for pictures and congratulations. We give each guy a front or rear quarter for their packs and started the 3.5 hour trek back to the fat cats. At this point you may be wondering what "Billy" has anything to do with this story. My kids take turns naming the deer I am after each year so this year "Billy the buck" was my intended target, and we found him.
"Tracking the trident": Day 4 brings us back into the same general area, only today we are hiking up into a canyon where Bryan has shot and spotted deer in the past. We make our vertical climb into position and pick up deer immediately. After not seeing any bucks right away, we climb further up the mountain and a buck explodes from his concealed location about 200 yards straight up the hill running away from us. My dad takes an offhand shot out of instinct, but the terrain he was on did not offer a great platform to shoot from; a clean miss. The buck drops out of sight for a minute but returns into view heading away from us across the face of the canyon we are in. This time Scott is able to lay down and get settled. I let out a 2 fingered whistle and get the deer to stop broadside at 380 yards. A squeeze of the trigger and the .270 Nosler finds it mark with a "thump" and a back leg kick from the buck. Great shot game over right? Wrong..... we make our way up to the point of impact and find decent blood, but no dead buck. We start the tracking procedure and begin to follow the wounded buck around the mountain. About 45 minutes later a couple shots ring out through the valley in the general direction that the wounded buck was headed. Bryan gets on the radio and relays that he has a good buck down! After Brian gets down to his buck he realized that this guy has an extra hole in him across his brisket! (Not a fatal wound in any way but enough to leave a light blood trail to stay on him). It was the same buck that my Dad and I had been tracking. By the time we made it over to Bryan he has the chocolate horned 4x5 quartered up and ready for pack out. We take some pictures and head off back to the bikes.
"The Monarch": The daybreak of day 5 has us perched on a knoll overlooking the huge Basin we had located my buck in. Only this morning we have company. There are 2 other groups of hunters flanking us, doing the same thing we are doing no less. After a few short minutes behind the binos, my dad briefly gets a glimpse of a tall buck drop into a draw following a group of does. Only problem is that the buck is much closer to the 2 guys to our right, however they have not seen what has just happened. Kenny and my Dad grab their gear and head off towards the direction the buck was travelling. They pass within feet of the 2 guys who are now glassing the hillside in the opposite direction. A simple head nod as they pass, puts Kenny and Scott into position to make a play on the deer. Scott leaves Kenny positioned in a rock pile directly above the draw the buck had slipped into. He comes up with a plan to slip around the mountain and come up below the deer in order to try and push the buck towards Kenny's position. As I watch this plan unfold through my spotting scope, I see Scott crest the ridge below the deer and immediately raise his rifle to his shoulder. Rifle comes down and then back up a second time, than a third! (What the heck, somebody shoot I scream in my head). Finally Kenny, (who is hidden from my field of view) gets him in the crosshairs and makes a great 285 yard shot. Radio mic's up with "he's down, great shot Kenny". I begin to pack my gear up to head down to help, but a another shot rings out from where the deer were. Did the deer get back up, do we have 2 bucks down? I have no clue what's going on until we all meet up. My dad had saw Kenny's deer get back up again and decided to put a finishing shot on him, he thought.... We are standing where he went down, what the heck; no deer. Slide marks, tumble marks, blood; the works. It is evident in the ground in front of us, that the buck was shot right here however the buck is gone! We start circling the area and relocate the buck about 75 yards from where he was last seen.
Kenny puts a third shot into his neck and finally the Monarch falls. This buck had both lungs and his liver eviscerated with the shots from Kenny and Scott, however he still refused to go down. An old heavy horned buck to say the least was finally in our hands, he had no teeth and the pads on his feet were worn down to nothing. We took some pictures of the awesome old 2x3, boned out the meat to distribute amongst our packs and began the 900'
vertical climb back out of the canyon.
"100% Grand Finale": The dawn of Day 8 was already upon us as we settled into our glassing position atop the barren knoll. This was the last day of season, last chance to find my Dad a buck. He doesn't shoot many deer these days as he thoroughly enjoys seeing others fill their tags rather than him. He has killed a lot of deer over the years, and I feel that for him that the hunt is truly more important than the harvest. I know a lot of people say that, but I know he truly believes it. I also know that the only reason he shot at the deer Bryan eventually took was because I was right beside him telling him in his ear to SHOOT, SHOOT!. (Peer pressure has no limits on age I guess). So as we situate ourselves up on the ridge, it takes me only a few minutes of glassing to turn around and say "I found him". Way across the basin I had spotted a great buck with deep back forks, that was alone with one other doe. Instead of circling all the way around the rim of the area we decided to take off straight at him. Descend into the bottom of the canyons and keep the wind in our face all the way over. 1.5 hours later we are perched up on a ridge top 425 yards from the buck who has moved slightly from his original location and is now bedded in a brush pile. We can see the back end of his frame and nothing else. I whisper and say with 100% confidence that this is the buck we saw earlier that morning, you need to shoot him. Kenny and I stay perched on the ridge concealed from the bucks view and we send Scott to pop up over the next little draw and have an approx. 150 yard shot on the bedded buck. My dad gets almost to the crest of the hill for position, when the wind changes. Turns his head wind into a tail wind and he is less than 160 yards from the deer's location. As you might have known, deer don't like the smell of humans all that much.
Realizing that the wind has changed he quickly makes it to the top of the hill and sits down with his rifle to his shoulder to scan for movement....and there is movement! He finds the buck now across the canyon quartering away from him and sent one right behind the shoulder at 200 yards. The buck staggers but continues trotting up the draw following his doe. He finally stops and turns back at 220 yards, bad choice. A 130 grain .270 found his vitals and he tumbled down the hill expired. Kenny and I start making our way over to the downed buck when our radio goes off. "He's only a 3 point", is all we hear Scott say. What the %$@*!!! A slight bit of panic enters my Brain as I try and relive the moment I saw him bedded and told him, "100% that's the buck we are after". As my mind is racing with possible explanations we keep trekking over to get a look at him. About 5 minutes later the radio keys again. "Never mind, I think I'm gonna cape him". Holy crap what a relief! (The buck had died with his head stuck in some brush, so when he glassed him up laying there all he could see were 3 horns sticking up). We made our way over to the buck and found a beautiful 4x4 laying at my dad's feet and a big ol' grin on his face. We took some photos and got the buck boned out for the hike out of the basin. Right before we were getting ready to leave I said to my Dad "Don't you look at the horns before you shoot"?. He said, "Why would I, you said 100%!".
We arrived in camp following a decent cold snap to the Southwestern portion of Idaho. We spent our first 2 days covering different elevation ranges in order to determine where the deer were holding up this time of year. After realizing that the cold front had pushed a lot of deer out of the high country we began to hunt lower and lower in elevation until we finally found where the deer were staging. On day 2 we found a nice 3x3 buck in the spotter and after closer examination we noticed that his neck was swollen and he was pushing his female companions around the hill. What a fantastic surprise, we were coming up on the rut. This single buck observation altered our strategy immensely. Instead of trying to find a solo buck hidden amongst the terrain, we now just needed to find the doe's.
"Where's Billy": Day 3 brought on morning rain and fog in the middle range elevations, so we decided to go even lower to get underneath the fog layer and increase our visibility. After a 30 minute truck ride and a 45 minute motorcycle ride up the trail, we settled into a spot to glass a large basin. Within the first couple of hours we spotted quite a few deer along with a nice 4x4 bedded halfway across the basin with a handful of doe's. After moving a bit closer and getting a better look at the buck it was decided that we needed to go after him. The four of us came up with a plan for Kenny and I to make a stalk across the canyons and try to get into a shooting position. Fast forward 1.5 hours later and we are standing at the base of a small ridge covered in thick brush that is shielding the bucks last known location. Kenny asks, "What's the chance he's still there", I say50/50 at best. Now, 10 yards before the crest we shed our packs and crawled(literally) over the top. As we break the plane of the hill, our first look shows us nothing, no deer! What the heck. (50/50 I say in my head). Then out of the corner of my eye I see movement, and its close. I swing around in a sitting position and there is our buck trying to sneak back over the ridge less than a 100 yards from us. In auto pilot at this point, I steady my 25-06 and send one right through both lungs. Game over. Nice 22" 4x4 is down. I get on the radio and relay to my Dad and Bryan, "Billy is down". After snapping a few quick pictures with T-Rex and snow white (my good luck charms from the kids), the rest of the pack crew makes it way over for pictures and congratulations. We give each guy a front or rear quarter for their packs and started the 3.5 hour trek back to the fat cats. At this point you may be wondering what "Billy" has anything to do with this story. My kids take turns naming the deer I am after each year so this year "Billy the buck" was my intended target, and we found him.
"Tracking the trident": Day 4 brings us back into the same general area, only today we are hiking up into a canyon where Bryan has shot and spotted deer in the past. We make our vertical climb into position and pick up deer immediately. After not seeing any bucks right away, we climb further up the mountain and a buck explodes from his concealed location about 200 yards straight up the hill running away from us. My dad takes an offhand shot out of instinct, but the terrain he was on did not offer a great platform to shoot from; a clean miss. The buck drops out of sight for a minute but returns into view heading away from us across the face of the canyon we are in. This time Scott is able to lay down and get settled. I let out a 2 fingered whistle and get the deer to stop broadside at 380 yards. A squeeze of the trigger and the .270 Nosler finds it mark with a "thump" and a back leg kick from the buck. Great shot game over right? Wrong..... we make our way up to the point of impact and find decent blood, but no dead buck. We start the tracking procedure and begin to follow the wounded buck around the mountain. About 45 minutes later a couple shots ring out through the valley in the general direction that the wounded buck was headed. Bryan gets on the radio and relays that he has a good buck down! After Brian gets down to his buck he realized that this guy has an extra hole in him across his brisket! (Not a fatal wound in any way but enough to leave a light blood trail to stay on him). It was the same buck that my Dad and I had been tracking. By the time we made it over to Bryan he has the chocolate horned 4x5 quartered up and ready for pack out. We take some pictures and head off back to the bikes.
"The Monarch": The daybreak of day 5 has us perched on a knoll overlooking the huge Basin we had located my buck in. Only this morning we have company. There are 2 other groups of hunters flanking us, doing the same thing we are doing no less. After a few short minutes behind the binos, my dad briefly gets a glimpse of a tall buck drop into a draw following a group of does. Only problem is that the buck is much closer to the 2 guys to our right, however they have not seen what has just happened. Kenny and my Dad grab their gear and head off towards the direction the buck was travelling. They pass within feet of the 2 guys who are now glassing the hillside in the opposite direction. A simple head nod as they pass, puts Kenny and Scott into position to make a play on the deer. Scott leaves Kenny positioned in a rock pile directly above the draw the buck had slipped into. He comes up with a plan to slip around the mountain and come up below the deer in order to try and push the buck towards Kenny's position. As I watch this plan unfold through my spotting scope, I see Scott crest the ridge below the deer and immediately raise his rifle to his shoulder. Rifle comes down and then back up a second time, than a third! (What the heck, somebody shoot I scream in my head). Finally Kenny, (who is hidden from my field of view) gets him in the crosshairs and makes a great 285 yard shot. Radio mic's up with "he's down, great shot Kenny". I begin to pack my gear up to head down to help, but a another shot rings out from where the deer were. Did the deer get back up, do we have 2 bucks down? I have no clue what's going on until we all meet up. My dad had saw Kenny's deer get back up again and decided to put a finishing shot on him, he thought.... We are standing where he went down, what the heck; no deer. Slide marks, tumble marks, blood; the works. It is evident in the ground in front of us, that the buck was shot right here however the buck is gone! We start circling the area and relocate the buck about 75 yards from where he was last seen.
Kenny puts a third shot into his neck and finally the Monarch falls. This buck had both lungs and his liver eviscerated with the shots from Kenny and Scott, however he still refused to go down. An old heavy horned buck to say the least was finally in our hands, he had no teeth and the pads on his feet were worn down to nothing. We took some pictures of the awesome old 2x3, boned out the meat to distribute amongst our packs and began the 900'
vertical climb back out of the canyon.
"100% Grand Finale": The dawn of Day 8 was already upon us as we settled into our glassing position atop the barren knoll. This was the last day of season, last chance to find my Dad a buck. He doesn't shoot many deer these days as he thoroughly enjoys seeing others fill their tags rather than him. He has killed a lot of deer over the years, and I feel that for him that the hunt is truly more important than the harvest. I know a lot of people say that, but I know he truly believes it. I also know that the only reason he shot at the deer Bryan eventually took was because I was right beside him telling him in his ear to SHOOT, SHOOT!. (Peer pressure has no limits on age I guess). So as we situate ourselves up on the ridge, it takes me only a few minutes of glassing to turn around and say "I found him". Way across the basin I had spotted a great buck with deep back forks, that was alone with one other doe. Instead of circling all the way around the rim of the area we decided to take off straight at him. Descend into the bottom of the canyons and keep the wind in our face all the way over. 1.5 hours later we are perched up on a ridge top 425 yards from the buck who has moved slightly from his original location and is now bedded in a brush pile. We can see the back end of his frame and nothing else. I whisper and say with 100% confidence that this is the buck we saw earlier that morning, you need to shoot him. Kenny and I stay perched on the ridge concealed from the bucks view and we send Scott to pop up over the next little draw and have an approx. 150 yard shot on the bedded buck. My dad gets almost to the crest of the hill for position, when the wind changes. Turns his head wind into a tail wind and he is less than 160 yards from the deer's location. As you might have known, deer don't like the smell of humans all that much.
Realizing that the wind has changed he quickly makes it to the top of the hill and sits down with his rifle to his shoulder to scan for movement....and there is movement! He finds the buck now across the canyon quartering away from him and sent one right behind the shoulder at 200 yards. The buck staggers but continues trotting up the draw following his doe. He finally stops and turns back at 220 yards, bad choice. A 130 grain .270 found his vitals and he tumbled down the hill expired. Kenny and I start making our way over to the downed buck when our radio goes off. "He's only a 3 point", is all we hear Scott say. What the %$@*!!! A slight bit of panic enters my Brain as I try and relive the moment I saw him bedded and told him, "100% that's the buck we are after". As my mind is racing with possible explanations we keep trekking over to get a look at him. About 5 minutes later the radio keys again. "Never mind, I think I'm gonna cape him". Holy crap what a relief! (The buck had died with his head stuck in some brush, so when he glassed him up laying there all he could see were 3 horns sticking up). We made our way over to the buck and found a beautiful 4x4 laying at my dad's feet and a big ol' grin on his face. We took some photos and got the buck boned out for the hike out of the basin. Right before we were getting ready to leave I said to my Dad "Don't you look at the horns before you shoot"?. He said, "Why would I, you said 100%!".
