The moments where training, preparation, and vision combine to deliver nearly everything you had in mind leading up to the event?
Well, this is as close to one of those stories as I think I will ever get.
And like many good stories, this one starts with winning the lottery… the tag lottery.
For the first time in my hunting career I drew an early season controlled tag, one that carried about a 11% chance of drawing in the state of Idaho. Not terrible odds, but in the past six years of being an Idaho resident, I had yet to draw any tag that I had applied for. To say that I was happy and surprised is an understatement. Not only did I draw, but I drew a tag that was on my home turf… one that I could use to hunt in an area that I trap year round.
Planning for this hunt commenced immediately with my two closest hunting partners agreeing to hit the ground with me on opening day. All three of us are fathers of young kids and we all had the chore of convincing our wives that the prestigiousness of this tag warranted us a 4-day window to go and try our damndest to find, harvest, and bring home a backcountry mule deer buck that was still in velvet.
In the lead up, myself and my two amigos did our best to sync gear lists, and ensure that we had everything we needed for a deep backcountry jaunt, but largely each of us were left to our own devices to make sure we were prepared. Personally, my bag was still packed from the last bear hunt I had in June, which gave me a level of complacency that would come back to bite me in the ass in little nagging ways.
The day before season opener, we headed out from our domesticated city lodgings to make the 4-hour drive to the rural trail head. With 50+ pound packs consisting of a hodgepodge collection of various shit, we slipped our socks and boots on and prepped for the hike in, which is where I made my first critical early season error.
In a rush leaving the house, I grabbed a pair of boot socks. Socks that looked like wool, but in fact, were very much not wool. Now mind you… I have been wearing the same pair of wonderful, overpriced, and sturdy kennetrek boots for the past two seasons with absolutely zero issue. In fact, I always sing the praises of these boots to any chump who gets caught alone with me at a wedding or dinner party… but in the past, these boots have always been paired with the wonderful wool fiber that all hunters should be wearing. But, in this instance, as I slipped on my thin synthetic devil socks, I was bliss(ter)fully unaware of what was about to come by this simple mistake.
At departure, we sent our spouses a last in-reach message as we started the late evening 6+ mile hike into our hunting area. With 2500’ of elevation gain and deadfall to overcome, this hike has historically taken me 4+ hours under equal conditions. Impressively, this go-round only took us a shade over 3, (only being slowed down by one stubborn trail badger and a few quick water breaks) which got us to our campsite at just past 10 pm. In the pitch black, we used the light from our headlamps to pitch our tent, lay out sleeping bags, and get a bit of sleep before our alarms rang at 4:30 am.
What happened next was a bit of a masterclass in mule deer hunting. We got up, did our camp dance, and made it up an adjacent ridge line to start glassing back toward the east facing slopes. (This is also when I first realized that my synthetic socks had rubbed holes in the back of my heels, too, which required the first of many rounds of moleskin and duct tape)
In short order one of my hunting partners spotted a nice little buck bandying about with a doe at a touch over 600 yards away. We patiently watched as this buck acted more like a dog than deer harassing the doe, stealing her bed, and peeing on just about everything he saw. With a limited time window to hunt, we were certainly not going to be size queens, so we locked in and decided we would pursue this deer and glassed him until he disappeared into an adjoining drainage.
Instead of chasing him we decided to let him go to bed during the heat of the day, which even at our high altitude was going to hit the mid 80s. Following suit, we spent the next few hours laying low in camp. At 4 pm, I re-wrapped my now bloody heels, and we packed up to hike to the bottom of the drainage our deer had picked as a napping spot. We set up in a sea of burned and dead-fall trees and picked apart every shadow for the next 3.5 hours. At about 7:30 pm, one of my buddies hollered out “I got him!”
After a bit of observation, we realized that our deer was quite content at the very tippy-top of a stupidly high, scree covered, hillside, which was about 700-800 vertical feet above where we were glassing. Without wanting to miss out on an opening day opportunity, me and one of my buddies decided to make a downwind play up an adjacent ridge line.
Rifle and shooting sticks in tow, we made the 500-ish vertical foot climb with my heels screaming with every step. On the way up, we managed to dust up a rogue doe who blew at us, but after a longer than expected standoff she ran the opposite direction of our target quarry. With a bit more scrambling we were able to get within 325 yards for a rim-to-rim shot. After setting up, adjusting turrets and parallax, all I had to do was wait for our deer to turn broadside. A quick forty seconds later, he did just that and I sent a perfect shot through his side and dropped him.
After a few high-fives and a massive cortisol spike, we ventured back down the drainage to collect our other hunting partner, drop unnecessary gear, and then sprint up the scree field to try and locate our deer before it got completely dark.
Thankfully, my pals were a little more mobile than ol’ bloody heels Hanson, and made quick work getting to the top, but in what seems to be a recurring-hunting-theme for me… they were having trouble finding the deer.
By the time I reached the top, I already had my headlight on. With only a five foot radial circle of light to work with the panic began to set in about the potentiality of not finding my deer. I began to replay my shot sequence, think too much about the pain in my heels, and worried about meat spoilage if we had to come back in the morning.
In a fit of desperation, I stopped what I was doing and said a quick prayer out loud to the big Man to give us some sign that the deer was actually hit. Then, I shit you not, I looked down at my feet and right there on a white rock was a large splotch of blood. At that moment I couldn’t help but laugh and give a hat tip to the man upstairs before hollering to the other guys that I was on blood.
In short order, we found the deer.
With some congratulatory whoops and hugs we came up on a scene that looked like something out of a still life magazine shoot. The deer had fallen perfectly into a small crevasse of deadfall wedged between timber, a rock, and some buckbrush. The result was a setup you couldn’t recreate if you had wanted to.
Being at such an incline though, we had to move the deer to a rock several yards below us to begin the butchering process. Once relocated, we all went at the deer in an uncoordinated and extended three-stooges bit. I, myself, started to skin-out the head, Kyle began to remove the front quarters, and Eric began at the ass-end. At times, we each needed to manipulate the animal in different directions and we all were struggling more than we cared to admit. It felt like a fighter shaking off ring rust by taking one or two shots to the chin that would normally be slipped. Nonetheless, after about an hour and a half worth of uncoordinated work, we had bagged up most of the meat, leaving only a macabre Jackson Pollack-esque blood painting on the rock.
The feeling of bounding down the side of a hill where mountain goats live, in the pitch black night, and loaded down with extra pounds of meat would typically induce a level of caution and fear. Yet, when it comes at the tail end of a successful day long hunt, there is none of that. We rode the rock elevator down with joy, laughter, and conversation. Each step saw us descend three feet while trying to stabilize ourselves with walking sticks or bracing ourselves against deadfall. With only a few navigational errors in the dark, we were back at our cached gear and ready to make the final push back to camp.
Just after midnight, we were back.
Exhausted, we loaded the meat into contractor bags (Editorial Side Note: always make sure there are no holes in said contractor bags if you plan to do this…) and placed all of our meat into the shallow creek right beside our camp to cool off.
With no fanfare, we stripped down to our skivvies and crawled into our sleeping bags gossiping like middle school girls. Then, mid-conversation recounting the epicness of the day, my buddy Kyle passed out… and I expected that I would be doing the same shortly.
However, for some reason I had a huge feeling of unease. I tossed and turned for what felt like an hour before I, too, joined the upside down of the unconscious. That quick dip into REM-sleep didn’t last long though as I was soon met with an unbearable stench of sulfur. I shot up to look across at my tent mate wondering if a day’s worth of freeze dried meals had turned his stomach. With no signs of movement from him, I began to question my own bowels before lifting up the tent’s edge to see if the smell was coming from outside. We were relatively close to some natural hot springs, which could have been the source, but when I lifted the fabric, I was met with a waft of fresh mountain air… which was both a relief to my sinus cavity as much as it was an addition to the mystery of the smells origin.
Shaking it off, I fell back asleep.
Hours later we all wrestled our snooze buttons at around 6 am. When the battle was finally won, I let out a big stretch before reaching for my sleeping bag’s zipper. With one long stroke I released myself from my cocoon only to be hit by a God-awful stench. I remember nearly gagging and expressing to my tent mate that I knew I reeked from the day’s prior activity, but I didn’t realize I smelled like a dog that had rolled in something dead. Somewhat impressed by how terribly I stunk, I crawled out of the tent obsessively sniffing everywhere my nose could reach to try and find the source.
In a bit of shock, I looked back at my sleeping bag to have my eyes catch a splotch of red and black. Getting closer, it became apparent that I had enjoyed the company of a bed mate. On hands and knees, I finally was able to make out that a small mouse had made its way into my bag for some warmth, before ultimately meeting its demise under the crushing pressure of my spine. The blood, internal organs, and poop had been worked into a near paste as if I were using a molcajete to make a thick salsa.
The brutality of my second kill of the night sent an instantaneous shiver through my body and stood the hairs of my extremities upright as I stripped myself of my clothes, placed them in a plastic bag, and then began to shake out my sleeping bag. A few hantavirus jokes later, we were over the ordeal and got down to the business of packing our camp for the long and slow descent back toward the trail head.
Thirty-one hours after starting our pack-in, we were officially on our way back home with our quarry on our backs. As a relatively new hunter in the grand scheme of space and time, I always find myself in sheer amazement when I bring something home to feed myself, family, and friends. It’s a bit of disbelief covered with a sprinkle of growing self-reliance that seems to expand with each passing season and one that is best served with a side of friendship.
PS: Don’t forget to go purchase a copy of my new book The Trade Gap
PPS: All photo credit to the amazingly talented Eric Becker
