Unit 39 Idaho Archery Success

My Idaho unit 39 Archery Rut hunt,

I had planned this hunt since early this summer when I found out about it, I had multiple people who wanted to go but no one could make it happen. I did a ton of online research on multiple forums and got a lot of great info on the hunt. I ended up meeting a guy on a forum who was coming up from out of state also to do the hunt, his wife didn’t want him hunting alone and I would also prefer to have a hunting partner. We ended up meeting up in Boise on last Monday and came up with a plan of attack for Tuesday morning. We went to an area where he had gone in the past which was also really close to an area on my list of places to go. Opening day we saw over a dozen bucks and probably 50 does or more, one of the bucks was a 190” 4 x 5 with 4” eye guards but I only came within about 100 yards of him and couldn’t keep up, I did a total of about 4.3 miles the first day and roughly 6000ft of elevation up and down after it was all said and done, my partner headed for the truck when I took off after the big buck, he ended up having to wait a couple hours at the bottom of the hill for me before I finally gave up on the big buck. It was snowing and everything was soaked, I ended up with blisters on both of my pinky toes from them pounding against the front of my boots coming down the mountain the second time. We saw a couple decent bucks and the guy I was with attempted a stalk on a decent 3 point, he couldn’t get close enough and ended up taking a shot at a doe in which he missed, overall I would say the first day was a success. We went back to Boise where we stayed at my hunting partners friend’s house, I dried my boots on the boot drier that luckily I brought with me, took a couple Advil and tapped up my toes.

!!!!!Big Buck!!!!!


Beautiful Country


Wednesday we traveled SE toward Mt. Home and found some nice open grassland to hunt, we saw over 100 deer that day and a couple of nice bucks. We had a nice 3 x4 at 90 yards but his does were to skittish to stick around, we followed him for a bit and could never get back on him, on our way out of that area we saw a really nice 4 point which also gave us the slip while trying to stalk in, we saw about a dozen bucks or so mostly big forkies and small 3 points. This day was much easier than the first and most of it was spent glassing deer from the vehicle. We drove back and ordered some pizza for dinner and came up with a plan for the following day.

Thursday we went back to the original area once again, this time we arrived a little later in the morning and there were two vehicles parked where we had hunted the first day. The area is very large and it was the only place to park to access several drainages, we decided to go ahead and park and go in from there. A couple hundred yard up the hill from the truck deer started pouring into the drainage right next to us, there were 3 bucks but nothing very big. We held still and let them cross above us, I had several does under 50 yards as we continued to sneak up the drainage. I noticed some of the deer were looking alert while starting to cross over the next ridge, turned and spooked back down across, I assumed a person must be in there. I made it up the next ridge about 30 minutes later and saw a guy sitting half way up the drainage on a small knob, my hunting partner bumped a doe out of the draw below and I watched as it headed straight for the guy above me. As the doe approached the guy noticed it and started to get ready crouching down behind a bush with his bow out in front, as the deer got within range I watched as the guy drew back and shot her as she stepped into view, he hit a little high and spined her, she dropped in her tracks and rolled out of sight. The guy was very excited, I saw him throw one hand in the air and then both hands went up and he started jumping up and down I am guessing it must have been his first kill with a bow and it was very fun to watch, I’m just glad I didn’t have to pack that doe all the way down out of there

We saw seven total guys up in that drainage that day but we did end up seeing a couple of bucks over the backside of the mountain but nothing stalkable. I sat there with the spotting scope watching the bucks below while my hunting partner walked off over the ridge, I glassed for about 20 minutes and then followed where he had gone. I got over to the ridge top and he was nowhere to be found, I thought maybe he went after the deer? There was no cell service and we had no radios so I just sat and waited, about 45 minutes later I noticed some deer running out of the trees about a mile down the ridge, I sat there for a little longer whistling hoping my hunting partner didn’t fall and break his neck somewhere and decided to circle the ridge around so I could glass down to the truck. I saw several deer while heading around but no decent bucks, when I got around to the other side of the mountain I could see that the tailgate was dropped on the truck so I headed down off of the mountain, it took me about an hour to get back to the truck where my hunting partner was sitting in the cab listening to the radio?? He told me he figured I would have been up there longer, I told him I had no idea where he was and sat there and whistled for a while before seeing the does spook, he told me he stalked to within 30 yards of them and spooked them. We ended up doing about 4000ft of elevation that morning and 4.5 miles. We still had a couple of hours of daylight left so we drove up a nearby creek bottom to check it out. We saw several does on the way up and when we got up to the snow line as we came around the last corner before turning around I noticed a couple does and a really nice buck bedded on the adjacent hill. We continued up to turn around and I had him drop me off on the way back down to try to put a stalk on the deer, I never ended up seeing them and after looking at where I went I believe I circled above them a hundred yards or so. That night we sat and tried to come up with a plan for the following day, my hunting partner told me he was beat and didn’t know if he was going to be able to go in the morning, he said to wake him in the morning and see how he feels.

Friday morning at 5:40 I get up and start getting ready, my partner came out and said he had some errands he needed to do that day and wouldn’t be able to go hunt? I told him that was ok and I would just go alone and check out a new area, I ended up driving up to Idaho City to check out some bigger timber country, I checked out a couple of spots up there and all I saw was elk. By 10 am I hadn’t seen a single deer so I loaded up and headed back to where we saw the buck the night before. I got just around the corner from where we had saw the buck the night before and there was an old man on a 4 wheeler sitting classing an old burned area, I stopped to talk and he showed me a 4 point buck he was watching over in the burn. After talking for a bit I told him good luck and hopefully the buck feeds its way down the mountain to him and I took off to continue my search. I drove up the road and glassed for about a half an hour before turning around due to heavy snow and slick roads. As I drove back down I noticed that the old man had left so I stopped to look for the deer and to my surprise the buck and does were still bedded out in the burn. The deer were in a horrible place to put a stalk on them, right in the open on a bare finger ridge about ¼ mile away from where I was standing. I sat and watched for a while hoping they would move and then I got a wild idea, I grabbed an old arrow out of my case, picked an old burned up tree about 50 yards above the deer and shot the arrow toward the old tree. The arrow hit the hillside above the deer, they all jumped up and looked up hill, not to bothered the deer turned and feed down across the draw into a little finger with some thick reprod. I made sure they were going to bed down and planned my stalk. I drove down the road and parked the vehicle so I could come in from below them. I got my gear and started the slow stalk through the snow, deadfall and buck brush in the burn. I worked up the backside of the ridge opposite from the deer and had a slight side wind to help carry my scent away, once I arrived at the old tree I had chosen as a land mark I peeked over the ridge to look for the deer, they had moved and were no longer where I had last seen them. I slowly worked up the ridge stopping every 20 feet or so to peek into the steep draw for the deer. I came to a small bowl where I figured they must had gone, I peeked in and still no deer, I then decided I would make a deer bleat and see if they stood, I used my voice to let out a bleat and waited, nothing??? Feeling discouraged and wondering how I hadn’t noticed the deer slipping out of the drainage I decided to continue up the mountain, I looked up the hill to start heading up and I could see the buck lying on the opposite side of the little bowl as me, I was looking through a small reprod, he was 30 yards away and locked onto me trying to figure out what made the noise. I figured I would have to draw while the tree was between us and step out to make the shot, I drew the bow and made my move. The buck and 3 does stood and the buck took off out to my right quartering away, I made a loud bleat and he stopped at 58 yards still quartered slightly away and looked back at me. I settled my pin a ways behind his shoulder and released the arrow, I saw the arrow burry deeply into his chest cavity and as he bolted blood was coming out in a steady stream. The buck attempted to jump a downed log about 45 yards from where I shot, he was unable to make the leap and cartwheeled onto the ground and slid into another log where he expired within a couple seconds. He ended up only going a total of 54 yards from where I hit him to where he expired, I was alone so even though I was just over ¼ mile from the vehicle I decided to bone him out and make only one trip out. It was approximately 10:00 when I first saw the buck and I had him on the ground at 12:03.

Before the Stalk ______________________________________________________________________________________________!!!!! The Blood Bath!!!!!


!!!First Look!!! ________________________________________________________!!!!!The Pack Job!!!!!


!!!!!Happy and Loaded Down!!!!!!


The pack out was not bad but I was pretty nervous when traversing back up the snowy hill below the rig, it was very brushy with a lot of dead fall. My pack ended up weighing 95lbs total. I loaded up the deer when back to Boise and told my hunting partner about the hunt. I wasn’t sure what to do with the meat if I stayed for another day or two so I decided to head back home so I could process the deer the next day and get the meat in the freezer. I got the buck cut up and wrapped on Saturday and boiled out the skull for a euro on Sunday afternoon. It was very rewarding to be able to go out of state, kill a decent buck with my bow, bone it out and pack it back all by myself. I am defiantly going to go back next year, I will go a week later next year with two tags and a full week obligated to the hunt.

!!!All Ready to wrap!!!____________________________________________________________________________________________________ !!!!All Cleaned up!!!!

Great write up and great hunt! Congrats!! You earned it! Thanks for sharing

Great hunt and report! I'm always talking that hunt up on the forums, because people complain about our OTC hunts.

Very familiar country in your pictures, thanks for sharing!

Thanks guys

Congrats on a great buck!

Well done!!

Congratulations!!

Very cool!

nice buck cool pics

That was a lot of fun to read! Gotta be one of the most complete write ups of a hunt on here...from the mountain, to the freezer and the wall. And all within a few days, that's awesome! Congrats!

great buck!

Great buck. Glad you got out, and got it done. Come back next year, it's always a fun hunt. I'll be on some of those hills Saturday.

Great hunt, congrats.

Thanks Guys,

This hunt was not quite like the Beulaha rut hunt I went on with a friend last year, you could probably kill a buck with a rock on that hunt. The Idaho deer were still very skittish which made it more like a spot and stalk hunt than a rut hunt. The rut and movement just made them easier to spot than normal.

Very cool!
Congrats!

Very Nice! Congrats on a successful hunt!

Great story and pics. Congrats!

If anyone else does this hunt this year I would love to here how it went later in the season. I am planning on going back this year but not sure on the dates. It seems like a week later would give the deer a little more time to move into the lower country?? It seems like the rut has really slowed down with the cold weather and snow over here in NEO though, maybe the deer have just hit the timber?

Just curious on what others experience, we were seeing about a dozen bucks a day and 50-100 does depending on where we were. Most of the bucks were forkys or small 3 points thought with only 1 mature buck a day and a couple smaller 3 or 4 points like the one I killed.

I have gotten a couple questions about this hunt through PM's. I figure it is best that I just comment on the post. IMO if I was wanting to go kill a mule deer with a bow especially a mature deer this would not be my hunt of choice. I hunt General OTC in NE Oregon and see way more mature deer that are much more stalkable every day I chose to deer hunt. A buck is easier to find during the summer in the velvet sitting behind glass and much easier to stalk up on when he is alone in the hot sun sleeping or possibly with another buck or two. During the rut the deer hardly hold still for more than a few minutes at a time and are always on edge, the does more so than the bucks, you also have way more eyes watching for you and the animal are way more alert when it is cold. The picture of the big buck was taken through my binoculars and that was the closest I got to him, not because he was spooked and saw me but because the deer were just moving around rutting and the country was too steep to keep up with them on.

In the four days we were there and hunted the buck i shot was the only buck I had within range and he had me pegged before I ever saw him. Opening morning in the general season here in Oregon I made 4 different stalks to within less than 100 yards of several bucks much bigger than this one. That is the only day I even hunted mule deer in Oregon and I hunted them for about 3 hours before continuing elk hunting. The reason this hunt is so appealing to me is because it is an additional opportunity to hunt deer with my bow that doesn't fall in the middle of my Elk Season and it is only 2.5hrs from my house. I know if I put four full days in deer hunting in Sept. I would see way more deer and many more mature bucks than we saw on this hunt, if I didn't elk hunt all of Sept. I would be headed to some of the open country here in Oregon or ID to hunt deer with my spotter.

My point is I will continue to do this hunt because it is another opportunity to hunt for me that doesn't mess with my hunting season here at home, my advice to anyone that is just looking for a good archery mule deer hunt would be to look for a hunt during the summer when the bucks are easy to find and the weather is nicer, I see a lot more deer here in Oregon during the general season while elk hunting than we saw in Idaho. Obviously this hunt is doable and I had a great time, but I have been on much better mule deer hunts and much easier hunts, I think anyone who is coming on their first mule deer hunt or traveling and spending lots of money to do it will be very disappointed with this hunt. If I wanted to plan a dream mule deer hunt it would be an early summer Colorado archery high country hunt and not central ID. I live close and had free lodging in Boise plus I already had a license, I only spent like $150 all together on this hunt which was awesome.

First buck down

I took my first archery deer on this same hunt. I killed mine on Nov. 23rd, At the time we found that the deer weren't hardly rutting at all. In fact if you look at the picture of mine his neck isn't hardly swollen at all. We did see one buck bigger than mine that was rutting extremely hard but none of the others appeared to be rutting very hard. I agree that this is just a good hunt for people who hunt elk all of Sept. and would still like an opportunity for deer. I've been archery hunting for 3 years and hadn't really tried for deer very hard so this was a great first buck for me. Congrats on yours as well!