This year, I spent the September bow season
trying desperately to get friends and relatives into mulies. We had many close calls, and I even sent an arrow deerward myself, but no meat hit the ground. Luckily, Idaho is blessed with generous of deer seasons. Hopefully, our regulations will never change in that regard( knock on wood). Presently, if you can shoot a bow, a rifle, and a muzzle loader, you can hunt deer from the middle of August until the end of the year somewhere in the state. Knowing this, I broke my. 243 out of its vault and found some ammunition for it. I figured it was time to see some new country and try some rifle hunting for a change. If I did see a legal critter( bear, cougar, wolf, coyote- or even possibly a deer?), I’ d be happy I had that good old gun with me.
It was a cold, wet morning when I left home a couple hours before daylight and headed in the general direction of where I wanted to hunt. I was pretty sure I could remember the directions I’ d been given a few years back to a promising area. Within one hour I knew I was lost; within another 45 minutes I realized I’ d come in on a road one un-crossable ridge north of where I really wanted to be. When I got to the end of the road, I saw the parked pickup of a Facebook acquaintance of mine that I know shoots some giant deer. I didn’ t want to jack with his hunt, so I decided to backtrack a mile or two and look for a good canyon to hike up. If I did bugger any deer, hopefully they’ d flee in his direction.
I found a gorgeous canyon that didn’ t look too nasty. It stayed that way for maybe a hundred yards, and then turned into Idaho. After I was maybe two miles from the road, I heard crunching below me in the leavesand my binoculars revealed a doe and a yearling fawn sneaking away from my scent stream. This was late October, so I figured it was close enough to the start of the rut that I might find something with antlers lurking with
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