When most people hear “whitetail hunt,” they picture hardwoods or agriculture and not steep terrain. They don’t picture dropping 4,000 vertical feet into the burned-up, brush-choked mountains of northern Idaho to hunt whitetail deer. But that’s exactly what we did.
Last November, nine of us, all employees of Eberlestock plus one spouse, rented a house in northern Idaho and committed to something we’ve never done at this scale before: a full-blown mountain-style team whitetail hunt. Most of us carried two tags. All of us carried high expectations and a lot of excitement. By the end of our five-day hunt, we would kill thirteen bucks, but on the first morning, none of us knew what we were in for.
Day one started at 4:00 a.m. We split up into groups of two and headed out to separate spots. Tanner, the Eberlestock COO, and I are the two most tenured employees at Eberlestock. We’ve watched the company grow, weathered many seasons together, and spent more time in the mountains than we can count. It felt fitting that we’d start this hunt side by side.
Our plan seemed simple enough. We’d drop my truck at the bottom of a long drainage, then circle up and around with Tanner’s truck to the top. From there, we’d hike mostly downhill all day, descending nearly 4,000 vertical feet, glassing and still-hunting our way to my truck. After dropping about 1,000 vertical feet in the cold November rain, we reached a good glassing knob and started picking apart the area below us. The country had burned a couple years earlier, so it was now full of deadfall, burnt standing trees, and super dense brush. Surprisingly, we found deer immediately, and one of them was a good whitetail buck on the move, looking for hot does.
For a split second, I thought I saw something bigger: a flash of antler, heavy and tall, just before he disappeared over the ridge. We couldn’t relocate him, so we turned our attention back to the buck we still had eyes on. Eventually the buck bedded in a nasty, steep pocket in the burn. With the rain tapering off, the wind calming, and the buck bedded, we dropped lower to make a play.
Tanner was first up on the gun. I was on the camera, and my priority was to film getting a buck down on the first day. Eventually, Tanner got in position and took the shot. The buck lunged, crashed, and piled up below us. Tanner had done it!
As we watched the buck expire, we saw some movement. Another buck! He was walking directly at Tanner’s deer; with the rut on, we think he was looking for a fight and that the commotion drew him in. We could only catch glimpses through the brush and eventually lost sight of him altogether. After a few minutes, Tanner started working his way down to his deer while I stayed up high, periodically trying to relocate the second deer. When I finally did, he was moving away in the direction he’d come from. I got a better look but not enough to fully gauge his size. He was good enough, and I was excited to double up with Tanner to make the experience even more memorable. I settled in, squeezed, and the buck dropped into the brush.
I made my way down, navigating deadfall and pushing through brush. I couldn’t see my deer at first, but I still couldn’t see him clearly. I marked the location and made my way over to Tanner. We took photos with Tanner’s buck first, a beautiful mountain whitetail with a huge kicker off his right side. Then we walked over to mine. He was tangled under some brush. When I grabbed his antlers and pulled his head free, we were both shocked. He was huge! Neither of us had realized it from a distance, but he ended up being the biggest of the entire trip.
That’s when reality set in. I remember looking at Tanner and saying, “What have we done?”
“I don’t know. This is going to be terrible.” Two mature bucks in the nastiest hole on the mountain, only halfway to the truck, and it was close to getting dark. We quartered each deer individually, working carefully as daylight faded. By the time the meat was hung and bagged, it was clear we were in trouble. The “easy downhill day” had taken more out of us than expected. We hadn’t brought enough water or food. We were running on pure adrenaline and Wilderness Athlete supplements.
We decided to leave the meat and antlers hanging, mark the location, and come back the next day with help. The descent to my truck turned into a survival march. Each step, the slope steepened, loose rock gave way, and deadfall forced us sideways into sketchy sidehills. What looked reasonable on OnX felt brutal under dying headlamps. We didn’t reach my truck until after 1:00 a.m., and by the time we retrieved Tanner’s truck and got back to the house, it was nearly a full twenty-four-hour day. Day one was over. Two bucks down.
Day two, Ty punched his tag early in the morning. Then he, Noah, and Carson met up to help Tanner and me pack out our deer. It was a grind, but it was a good call to wait for the next day when we had sleep, water, food, and reinforcements.
Each night settled into a rhythm at the house. Guys would return from being out all day and pile up bucks by the door. Outer layers were hung to dry throughout the house. Someone always stepped up to cook, and we ate well on this hunt. Around the dinner table, maps came out. OnX pins were compared, and plans were made carefully to avoid hunting over each other. There wasn’t much trash talk—just the regular office banter. You could see the fatigue setting in on some guys more than others. This wasn’t Midwest whitetail hunting, though that, admittedly, comes with its own challenges. This hunt had no food plots or tree stands. This was vertical, burned, brutal mountain country.
On day three, Hunter and Nate dropped into a thick hole that looked promising from the huge bucks that nearly fell out of it. They decided it would be easier to hike down the ravine than back up the bottom. It wasn’t. They’d chosen a line that sent them through thorny blackberry bushes that pushed them feet tall in some places. By the time they reached us, their arms were shredded, their hands were bleeding, and their clothes were torn. Nate killed a nice buck the next day, time in a spot with a much easier access.
Chase also killed a solid buck on day three after coming close the two previous days. Carson and Noah had close calls in heavy fog—quick opportunities that didn’t come together—but on the final day, both doubled up on beautiful bucks. With the trip coming to a close, most of us had filled at least one tag and only a few of us still had a second tag to fill. The trip was already a success.
I still had one tag left going into the final day, and I decided to go back into the drainage where Tanner and I started the week. Fog had blanketed the mountain for two straight days, and visibility was poor all morning. I didn’t know if I’d even get a shot at seeing another deer. That afternoon, the fog lifted just enough to see 1,000 yards or so. I glassed across and caught movement—a decent buck trailing a doe on an open hillside about 450 yards away. I quickly went prone, executed a good shot, and he went straight down. When I walked up on him, there wasn’t a crew waiting, nor was a camera running. Just quiet mountain air and the weight of a full week. I broke him down alone and packed him out that evening in the dark. Thankfully, Carson was able to pick me up at the bottom.
Chase and his wife, Sarah, hunted hard all week. They’d leave the house hours before sunrise and return hours after sunset. On day five, they doubled up, punching tags almost simultaneously to wrap up the hunt.
There’s something different about suffering alongside the people you work with every day. Sharing a house, sharing meals, sharing exhausting packouts… These Idaho mountain whitetails don’t fit the whitetail stereotype. Many of them live in steep, unforgiving country, and it takes a lot of work to harvest a mature buck. I feel fortunate to have gotten to hunt with a solid crew of guys that I get to see at the office every day. We regularly recount stories from this hunt, and I’m hoping we can make this a yearly hunt!
Watch the full hunt film on Eberlestock’s YouTube channel.
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