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2 for 3 Idaho wilderness elk

livetohunt

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Feb 16, 2017
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North Idaho
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Well it was our first year hunting in the selway zone wilderness and we seem to have done better than most we talked to that were up there. We did the rifle hunt during mid to end of September. It was a 9 day hunt with camp at approx 7000 feet. Because of where the season fell we all got there the day before opening. We had made three total scout trips during the summer and had seen a good amount of elk and mule deer.
Opening day we found ourselves on the road trying to get anything to bugle but with a local wolf pack we later found out about, they don't bugle much at all there. We got a response from some cows eventually and drove around to get the wind right and made a plan of attack. After about 100 yards of walking we peered down into the draw and there was a big bodied 4x5 satellite bull 150 yards from us in the bottom. My buddy dropped it with a high shoulder shot.

3 days later we found ourselves with 8" of snow on the ground and it was still coming down like crazy! We decided to do a push hunt because visibility was about 200 yards at the time. I got setup at the end of a draw and my two buddies (one that tagged out) drove around and came in from the bottom. About 2 hours later I heard some shots and figured they got something. They had found the 6 point herd bull to the satellite bull that we previously had taken. They had a 300 yard shot and it was his first elk and buck fever set in! He missed 3 shots and only had one of the handloads left I had made for him when he dumped it with a neck shot.

After packing that bull elk out we had gotten even more snow and didn't get back to camp until midnight. We slept in the next morning and decided to drive up to the lookout (cell service) and see when the weather was going to break. Well it wasn't. And in the hour that we were gone from camp we had to cut thru two trees to get back to camp.

At that point we had 2 out of 3 tags filled and decided to leave before we got stuck 34 miles back in the middle of nowhere! So we only hunted 4 out of 9 days, I'm pretty confident we would have been able to get my bull if we had not gotten snowed out!
 
Would have liked to shoot first but when my buddy next to me spent $700 more for his tag and drove twice as far as I did, I figured I would let him fill his tag first!

I had big hopes of finding elk in the open at long distances in the huge burn areas but the limited road access and horse camps all funnel everyone into certain areas and they were too pressured to be in the open after this first day.
 
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