TripleJ
New member
I got invited to hunt whitetails over in Idaho for this 1st time this year. None of us had ever hunted in that country before, so we all went into it pretty blind. I did have a list of drainages and road systems to check out thanks to one of my customers that lives in that area. The hunting turned out to be pretty tough, and the pressure was definitely more than we imagined. The warm weather and lack of snow didn't help much either. On the morning of the 4th day of our trip, I hiked in behind a Forest Service gate in a road closure area. There was a large clearcut back in a ways beyond the gate. I then proceeded to hunt the cut like I would blacktails here in western Oregon, creeping along the top edge of the unit and glassing every few steps. After about an hour, I located a doe feeding on a bench below me, and soon after, I located a buck in her general vicinity. The shot ended up being about 200 yards. I was very surprised when I walked up on him. I guess you could call it the opposite of "ground shrinkage." I feel very fortunate and blessed to kill a good buck like this, especially on my 1st try at hunting whitetails.