Idaho Whitetail

[Horn Seeker]

Went to N. Idaho for a whitetail hunt with my dad and 4 other buddies....this was a kick in the ass. The deer were everywhere...there were some big bucks spotted, but none were killed. 1 nice one though..

I am in a couple of the pics because I had actually teamed up with guys rattling and such and had put the coup de grace on a couple of these after my buddies wounded them. Anyhow, the camp went 5/6, and I passed up 6 small bucks, so we could have easily went 6/6.

Here are some of them...

Dads buck, the biggest one. Super duty mainbeams and mass, but not much after that....TALL Mains.

My buddy Storm popped this buck after 5 minutes of rattling...he never knew what hit him, spine shot.

Jason killed this one the last morning we were there....

Matt took this one after I rattled 2 different ones in that he didn't want, then this one was just too tempting on the walk back to camp!

I've got 3 days to look around over Thanksgiving...something ought to die. I probably wont be as picky cause I'm needing some more jerky and sausage meat since I am not seeing and elk in my freezer yet!

Ernie

 

[Horn Seeker]

Here's me with my dad's buck, shows the mains a little better.

 

[mtmiller]

Nice bucks Ernie, good luck finding one for yourself.

 

[Ithaca 37]

What a great hunt! Congrats! Tell us about your rattling technique, please.

 

[DRAFTSTUD]

Great Hunt! John

 

[Oak]

Looks like you guys had a great hunt. That buck of your Dad's looks pretty nice.

 

[justdada]

Looks like you guys had a great time.
Good luck when you head back out!

 

[Elk Turd]

Congrats on the Hunt! All are nice deer!

We just got back after a week up in N. Idaho. We did not do as well as you all did! I did get a 8 point, and one other guy got a 10 point. Everyone else passed up on smaller bucks/does.

 

[Horn Seeker]

I sure didn't see the big bucks I was hoping to, but there were a couple sightings...and my dads buck was plenty nice! We saw a monster on the back of the truck....5 by 5 with long split eyeguards, making him a 6X6 with excellent mass and width and length, probably a gross 170 type buck....I had little fantasies of something like him stepping out the whole rest of the trip!!

Rattle technique was simple. We had some tarsal glands from the first buck we killed that we tied to our boots...

Then, we'd set up, grunt a couple times, then rattle for like 5 minutes straight, then grunt a couple times and wait. That was it. After about 10 minutes, if nothing came in I'd tickle the horns together, but that never proved to work...if nuthin came in, in the first 5 minutes, we didn't see nuthin!

Ernie

 

[Elk Turd]

Wow! Interesting way to rattle them in. Where we were at the F&G checkpoint and there were no reports of rut or migration yet, so the deer were still up high.

That sure is a nice buck your dad shot!!!!!!

I don't know how to post pictures, so my friend will post one hopefully today and I will tell the story of our hunt.

Thanks for the pointers!

 

[Horn Seeker]

I have no idea how to rattle....at some point, that is sorta some stuff I read...is there another "approved method"? If so, tell me, cause this worked good twice and did not work at all many, many times after that!!

You know...none of these deer had big swollen necks...several were obviously with hot does, but the rut didn't seem like it was really on good.

Ernie

 

[1_pointer]

I've always thought rattling would be a hoot, just never gave it much of a chance to work. Congrats on some good bucks and good luck!

 

[jkhunterid]

Congratulations on the success in camp.