Late October came and Kelly Leachman and I
took a jet boat up the Snake River from Hellar Bar to our hunting area . We had both drew mule deer tags . The first day we set up our wall tent and made camp . We decided to go for an evening hunt . I went up one drainage and Kelly went up another . The wind was blowing really hard . I saw a few deer , but no bucks , some elk and a bear . I could see Kelly on the next ridge . It looked like he was humped over like he was packing meat . I made it back to camp and met up with Kelly . He had also drew an either sex elk tag and had ended up getting a spike elk . He had packed the front shoulders out with him , so we took care of them . We got our packs ready to go back in the morning to get the rest of the elk . The next morning I grabbed my gun , some water , pack board and grabbed a handful of shells and put in my pocket . Kelly didn ’ t bring a gun . We hadn ’ t really planned on hunting . We were just going to pack his elk out .
We headed up the hill and about 2 hours into our journey Kelly said he saw a group of deer with two nice bucks in it . By then the deer were already spooked . I took my pack board off and used it as a rest and took a couple of shots at the buck , but missed . We watched the bucks go up the hill another 1200-1500 feet chasing the doe . We watched for 45 to 60 minutes until they bedded down . We made a game plan on how to stock them . There was a rock bluff between them and us that we used as cover . We belly crawled to the top of the rock bluff and peeked over the edge . We could see that they were still bedded down with the doe . I moved around enough so I could see one of the bucks through the grass . I took a shot at him and he didn ’ t move . I took another shot and he stood up . On the third shot I finally hit him . So I put some more shells in the gun and handed it to Kelly . By then the other buck was about 300 yards away . Kelly used my pack board as a rest and shot a couple of times . Right before the buck crested over the edge of the ridge he stopped and looked back at us .
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