THE HUNT THAT ALMOST DIDNT HAPPEN....
By Shawn Keller
It all started in May when two friends talked me into putting in for mule deer tag in unit 13. Now being a huge whitetail hunter it took some convincing. But I knew I could buy the out of state whitetail tag if we drew. We drew!
Then, the summer from hell came.
I ended up having Diverticulitis surgery that went wrong. I ended up spending the end of June until end of September in the hospital. I had lost 100 pounds and a lot of my muscle tone. Because of that, I was not sure if I was going to be able to hunt at all. But, with my friends’ encouragement and motivation telling me all I have to do is pull the trigger and they will do the rest I said‘ Let’ s go’! Now, I only had three weeks to prepare for the hunt that took me into some of Idaho’ s roughest terrain.
I bought my out of state whitetail tag and had my muley draw tag in my pocket and off we went.
We did a ton of glassing, looking for big bucks, close to the top of the deep holes to shoot. No luck. Then, I went to a spot that I knew had big whitetails and a few muleys. I started " ROCKING " the brush and to my surprise up jumped a 4x4 muley buck. I pulled up my 264 Win Mag and fired- BANG missed, BANG missed again! I told myself to relax and BANG SMACK! Down he went and rolled down the steep hill. Lucky for me there was a four wheeler trail that he rolled right onto and stopped. It looked like he had a huge body.
Come to find out Fish & Game aged him approximately 10 to 12 years old. Everyone in the camp ended up tagging nice 4x4 ' s on the hunt.
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