Perseverance Pays Off !
2012 Idaho Controlled Early Rifle Hunt By Travis Long
I had great anticipation for this hunt as I knew there was potential to harvest a good buck in the velvet if I put my time in to scout and find the bucks . The first weekend my friend and I went in to scout the area I planned to hunt a fire started the very same morning . We watched the fire slowly progress throughout the day , but thought the fire crews would quickly get in contained as it was moving slow . Unfortunately , that was not the case ! Two months later and over 140,000 + acres burned that fire shut down over half of the unit I planned to hunt . The area I planned to hunt was shut down to any access . My plans were foiled and I had to make a decision . Two of my buddies that drew the tag with me decided to exchange their tags for an over the counter tag , as Fish and Game offered that option due to the fire closures in the unit . I decided that I would hold out and start looking in other areas of the unit . I hunted in several different areas the first three weeks of the hunt , but never once saw a buck . In fact , I hadn ' t even located a group of does ! It was looking bleak .
The hunt opened on August 15th and closed on September 30th . So I had some time to try different areas that hadn ' t been closed by the fire . Though the areas I hunted did not produce the results I had anticipated I did not want to give up . If I had to eat " tag soup " then so be it . That was just the luck of the draw , as I kept telling myself . Around the first week of September a friend of mine that I had recently met out on the archery range called me to ask how the hunt was going . He had drawn the same tag the year before and did not have any luck filling his tag . I recounted the situations that I had been experiencing with the hunt thus far and told him that I wasn ' t sure I was going to fill my tag . He then began to tell me about a few bucks he had been watching for a few weeks on some private land . A friend of his had permission to hunt it and he thought we could get a chance at one of the bucks if I was interested . I graciously accepted his offer to go out and see what we could find .
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