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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