Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Idaho Unit 42 hunt results - buck down

I just got back from a good late season draw hunt in Idaho unit 42. I've drawn this tag 4 times and this is my third buck. He's not the biggest I've gotten in the unit, but is a nice buck.



The horns are 26", but don't have much mass in them. He was up on a hillside with a bunch of does, and three other smaller bucks. They are on the shelf just above the top left of the roof of the UTV in this picture.



We spotted him at about 800 yards, and sneaked up thru the sage until we were at the base of the hill, under a large Juniper tree. I lasered him at 365 yards, so I put my pack on the ground and went prone. I was using my Winnie M70 270 custom (BXroads old rifle).



The scope is a Conquest 3-9X, and the load is a Hornady 140 grain BTSP, over 58.0 gr of H4831SC. He was more or less facing me, slightly turned, downhill. I held for the front shoulder, just below the top of his back. I hit him in the front shoulder, and the bullet went through the shoulder, some ribs, the heart, and ended up in the liver. The buck stumbled down hill a few yards and collapsed into a bitter brush bush. The rest of the gang scattered on up the hill. I shot him at 4:20, and it took us about 90 minutes to drag him down the hill and do the gutless field dress on him.

We had a good hunt. We hunted for 5 days and looked at a lot of bucks. The coming years should be good ones. I never did find a big one, so I feel pretty good about this one. We drug up this morning in a light snow storm.



My partner still has a tag, so we will likely be heading back down this weekend, hoping that the weather and the rut will bring a big one out for him.