Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game A good season in Idaho and abroad....

Very nice elk. Lots of work involved.

I'm at the age where all my former partners quit or have passed on. I was fortunate to see the glory days of elk in Idaho. It really was much easier back then and I was younger.

Dave, this is Lou....half of the Michigan duo you helped/bailed out on the mountain with our elk. Thanks again by the way. Absolutely awesome write up! Thank you for going ahead with your annual account of your hunting season. I look forward to reading your write up every year as it is now the closest thing to elk hunting I get to do. I hope you are still hunting the area where we met (location secured either way) as It helps me understand what you are going through with your pack outs. Congratulations on another safe successful season. I hope to meet you again on the mountain some day to try and return a fraction of the help you provided us. Take care my friend.

Did I miss something? You killed two bulls???

Dave, we don't know each other. I live 2000 miles away from Idaho, but have hunted nearby several times. Your story telling prowess is perhaps unmatched on the fire. If you choose to not tell your annual hunting stories, the rest of us would be worse off. Not that you should feel any obligation to any of us, but it's a great treat nonetheless.

If you didn’t read the first post closely - yes sir, you did.

He bought a second elk tag. NR tags can be bought by residents but at the NR price.

Dave,

Great write up this year like always!! Congrats on all the success and memories made. I was just thinking when I was reading this and looking at the pictures how much Rowdy has grown up! You and your wife should be very proud. Seems like he is doing very well!
Can’t wait for the rest of this season/story!

Thanks 805. Guess you missed where I live. And yes I did miss where he said bought a NR tag. As fast as those things go didn’t think many people even tried for an extra tag.

What a story! What an experience! Awesome!

I’ve said it before. I really admire your dedication. But you need a pack horse.

If you’re offering Chester, I’m accepting! Otherwise, my pack horse is currently named Rowdy and I’m paying for his college instead of the new duck sled I want!

if you ever get to the point of wanting to unplug from social media please consider the ones who just went along with you on what we would consider the hunt of a lifetime and probably never get to do something like this but have dreamed and thought about it most of our lives....THANK YOU for bringing us along i enjoyed it all.....now what about that whitetail hunt

Damn decent of the both of you. If I lived close I’d be happy to pack an elk out for you.

Well Dave another epic year for you guys, you sure now how to get it done. As always thanks for the great write and pictures...more awesome memories!

Heck of a write up. I don't think you are selling Elk hunting as an easy outing, may discourage a few would be hunters though.

CONTINUED…

Matt and I returned on to Boise and our daily routines, and Rowdy headed back to school in Moscow. Most years this marks the beginning of a few weeks of the blues for me. I find it very difficult to go from being in “predator” mode for three weeks in the wilds of Idaho, to just a regular dad with a regular job upon my return. That transition was eased considerably this year by living vicariously through the exploits of Rowdy and Cadon as they chased whitetails soon after elk season ended. Both were kind enough to send me updates on the mornings and evenings they managed to get out. After a couple of close calls, Cadon was the first to connect. Rowdy followed with a buck of his own a couple of days later. Neither will make the record-books, but both boys were rightly proud of their efforts to scout and successfully hunt a new area this year. Both are pretty typical whitetail bucks for Idaho fwtw…








This year I had my own whitetail hunt to look forward to. Tim (TDN) and I have hosted each other a couple of times for hunts now, and this year Matt and I would be flying out to join him for a brief hunt on the family farm back in Illinois. Tim drove down from his home in Michigan, and picked us up in the airport in Chicago. The three of us then made the drive to western Illinois and the family farm his cousin Garen still actively farms. This would mark the third trip out there for me, and it gets better each trip honestly. My only complaint is the firearms season is broken into three-day segments, with Thanksgiving week wedged between those weekends. My wife is a patient woman, but even she has her limits. Thusly, we would be limited to a Friday/Saturday/Sunday hunt. It was shorter than I’d like but it beats sitting on the couch all weekend by a goodly margin.

Elk hunting in Idaho is mostly about suffering it seems. Deer hunting in Illinois offers the perfect contrast to that. It’s not terribly physically demanding, and it’s extremely social. The drive hunts, the tree-stands, the agricultural surroundings…all are wildly foreign in every way to how we do things back home. It feels like a three-day party honestly. The routine is mostly the same each day. We’d sit from daybreak to around noon. Everyone would then meet back at Garen’s shop to feast on whatever his dad (Glen) had thrown into the crock-pot for lunch. Then we’d head back out for the remainder of the day. Sunset would mark a return to the shop or Garen’s house for more grub, beers, and hard-azzing one another.

Tim, Garen, Dillon, Jordan, and Glen are all locals and constant fixtures of these hunts. While they serve as the nucleus of the social experience, there are a myriad of local characters coming and going during those three days. I met more wonderful people in those three days than I typically encounter in an entire elk season in Idaho…by a LOT.

I checked the forecast before we left and it was calling for morning lows in the single digits and sustained 30+ mph winds. For once the weatherman got it right. I brought the warmest clothes I own, and still froze my giblets off the first two days in that wind. Here I am on morning two wondering why I hadn’t taken up golf as a hobby instead of hunting…





Tim’s brother (Steve) and his friend also joined the group this year, and it didn’t take long for him to connect with a buck. It was pretty slow for the rest of us those first couple of days. The weather was BRUTAL, and that seemingly had deer tucked away in the thick stuff riding it out. Here is Steve back the shop after the first evening hunt...



TO BE CONTINUED...

keep it coming


Im out the next week trying to fill my archery deer tags.

Where's Paul Harvey? When you want the rest of the story!

Thanks for bringing us along. Much enjoyed and appreciated.

Very nice enjoyed it.

CONTINUED…

Matt was a bit warmer than me as he hunted out of a ground blind on Jordan’s place all weekend. He was arguable on the most productive piece of ground any of us hunted all weekend, but he just wasn’t seeing a lot of deer. Jordan has killed some HUGE bucks there the last couple of years so Matt kept grinding out the hours hoping one of the big bucks he’d spotted on the trail cams would make a mistake. Unfortunately, Matt would finish out the weekend without having an opportunity on anything larger than a small 3x.

I was down to my last evening sit on Sunday and had honestly resigned myself to the same. Garen had been in my ear about a small piece of land he thought I should hunt for the better part of two days, and I finally decided I should heed his advice and mix things up my last evening. I reasoned that if nothing else it was down in a relatively protected draw and out of the wind that had worn me down for three straight days.

Tim drove me out and got me pointed in the right direction towards where the ladder stand was located about mid-day. I hiked across the bean field with the high hopes that accompany any “new” spot a guy is first exposed to. I climbed the stand and settled in determined to enjoy my last evening regardless of the outcome. Here is bit of my view as I settled in for the evening...




I’d been in the stand about 5 minutes when a doe and two fawns walked out from behind me, and directly under my stand. They fed out into the bean field in front of me and it wasn’t long before I could hear more deer coming. More does and a little spike followed the general path of the first three. Pretty soon even more deer joined them. I saw more deer in that first hour than I had the duration of the trip. I stopped counting at some point north of 20. A basket-racked 4x had me contemplating an early conclusion to the evening hunt. I still had time though, and I figured I probably had at least another two hours of daylight left to turn up something a bit bigger.

A couple of does in the thick timber off to my right were acting spooked. I couldn’t decide if they were catching my wind or if something else had their attention. A flash of antler soon answered the question. He was buried in some thick vegetation, but I could make out just enough to know I was VERY interested in him. In a sudden burst, one of the does came running out of the thicket and stopped in the open field 15 yards in front of me. I could feel the pounding of my heart in my ears as I anticipated the buck to follow. It felt like forever but was probably only a minute later that he made his way out, nose to the ground in hot pursuit.

She spotted me bringing the muzzle-loader to shoulder and let out a snort of discomfort. He stopped in his tracks as a result, but it was already too late as I found him in the crosshairs. I’m a terrible shot free-hand but even I can hit something that big at 55 yards. When I squeezed the trigger deer scattered like a covey of quail. The buck made a mad dash to my east, but faltered before he made it another 50 yards. I climbed down from the stand and made my way over to him. His right side was much better than the left, but I was still quite happy to have punched my tag. I couldn’t get over the size of the body of the deer. He looked like a healthy Hereford compared to most of the deer back home. Apparently beans and corn are better eating than bitterbrush!



I texted all the boys what had happened, and Garen said he'd be out to pick me and the deer up shortly. Neither one of us are small, but it took everything we had to lift that big bastard into the back of his flatbed pick-up. The picture I took back at his shop gives a much better idea of the size of the deer...



TO BE CONTINUED....