I felt lucky in 2021. I just knew that mowing my grandpa’s lawn for the last year in exchange for a 6.5 Creedmor would pay off. In June, my dad and his friend started running and training for their own hunts. I decided I needed to join them so I would be ready in case I drew a hunt. It’s a good thing I did! I found out a few weeks later that I drew an Idaho mule deer tag for a controlled youth hunt.
The first week of October, my grandpa and I set off on the road headed for Idaho. We took his brand-new truck and the gooseneck trailer. We had some locations to scout thanks to Eric from Huntin’ Fool and from our friend, Andy, who took his kid there once. We planned to camp where he had. After we set up our camp, we scouted since the season opened the next day. We found a good spot with a spring with some other good areas but didn’t see any deer.
When we woke up the next morning, we jumped in the buggy and went to the spot with the spring. “We didn’t see a deer there yesterday, but we might get lucky,” I thought. However, there was no sign of deer. We kept glassing one spot after another throughout the morning and into the afternoon. We sat on a nice glassing spot and had a sandwich and a cookie. When we had just about finished lunch, Grandpa spotted some deer. In the group, there was a doe, a spike, and a shooter buck. Grandpa and I made our way closer to the deer. We lost sight of them for a while, and when we spotted them again, we were 325 yards from the group. I noticed that the top one was the nice buck. I took aim at him from a rock, and then I shot. He spun around, and I shot again. He lay down behind some brush.
Grandpa said we should sit tight and make sure the buck didn’t get up. Finally, after a good, long wait, we headed over to where we saw the buck lay down. I was so excited to get my hands on him, but when we got there, we made a horrible discovery. The buck was gone! We knew he was hurt, so he couldn’t have gone far. Grandpa and I tracked him through some trees, and when we came into a clearing, there he was. I finished him off at 5 yards.
We high fived, took some pictures, and field dressed the buck. We were so excited, but we had a problem. How would we get him out? We walked two miles back to the buggy so that we could lighten our packs, grab some water, and get supplies to clean the buck. We parked the buggy on top of the cliff closest to the buck and walked down. Sliding down the gravel was pretty fun.
We got to the buck and drug him under some shade, and with my new cleaning kit, we boned him out. Grandpa packed what he said was about 100 lbs. of meat. I packed the head of the 5x4 out. It was hard work climbing up the steep cliff and over the rim rock, but we made it.
Grandpa and I were exhausted but very happy when we got back to camp. As I crawled into my sleeping bag, I realized this was one of those amazing days I would remember for the rest of my life. I felt so thankful for the people who helped me get ready for the hunt and so lucky that I got to do this with my grandpa.
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