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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