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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