Shawn Carlock
Sponsor
Well the summer has been a crazy amount of busy building guns and teaching classes. I love my job especially teaching long range classes, but I have been looking forward to August 30th all year. You see I was fortunate enough to get an outfitters tag for Idaho's Unit 1 early season rifle mule deer. While this tag was good for a couple of months I was only really interested in the first week since the mule deer in the area keep their velvet usually until the second week of September sometime.
All summer I have been teaching and practicing long range with as you probably guessed a 338 Edge. I was prepared to go 1500-1600 yards (assuming really good conditions) if I needed to, to anchor a good mule deer buck in the velvet. Anything in the 3 digit range and reasonable conditions was starting to look like a chip shot.
Well August 29th rolled around and I gathered up my mountain of long range hunting and filming gear and headed to my friend Brandon's house. Brandon is a good friend of mine and also a guide for Selkirk Outfitters. Brandon was the guy how put me in contact with Bruce Duncan the owner and hooked me up with the early season hunt. After unloading from my truck and loading to Brandon's we left for the Selkirk Outfitters Lodge in north Idaho. We arrived and met with Bruce, Bruce described the plan for the next day's events and we settled in for a steak dinner. Later that evening Justin showed up to come along as a packer for the next few days. We spent the rest of the evening dividing up all of my filming gear so everyone could share in the fun of carrying some of it up the mountain.
We rolled out of bed at 03:00 on the morning of the 30th and loaded our gear in Bruce's truck and headed out. We drove along in the dark for quite a way, stopped and unloaded all of our gear. We saddled up and started out, we climbed for over an hour to reach "buck basin". I setup the video camera and tune in my Recon using the Kestrel 3500. We drag out spotting scopes, binoculars and wait for it to get light enough to see. As it starts to get grey light and some of the major terrain features are distinguishable it becomes clear that the area is just absolutely beautiful and also a long range shooters paradise. It hadn't been light enough to glass for more than a minute or two when Justin spotted the first buck of the morning. After the first buck spotting everyone started spotting buck's faster than I could get film of them. About 16 or 17 minutes into this buck spotting frenzy someone, I am not sure who spots a buck that looks good in the binoculars and we all get on it. It doesn't take long the decided that even though this is the first 20 minutes of a 5 day hunting trip that this is the buck we are here for. I could see great mass, very tall overall height, and a handful of sticker points, just what the doctor ordered. I slid in behind my 338 Edge Canyon Rifle, I grabbed the PLRF 10 and instantly ranged him at 737 yards, I pressed the power button on the Recon and was instantly faced with the drop chart for the current conditions where I had left it. I dialed in the 13.50 moa elevation that the Exbal program called for and asked Brandon what he thought about the wind. Brandon and I agreed we had a tail wind of only 2-3 mph at our position and a very slight right to left wind in the canyon itself. By this time the buck had his head in a brush patch feeding and was only a step or two from disappearing, possibly for the rest of the day. I centered the NPR1 crosshairs of the Nightforce NXS 5.5-22 as close to the front shoulder as I could without crowding the tree in front of him to much and told Bruce who was on the spotting scope, "I'm on it." Bruce waited a couple of seconds and replied, "Send It". I applied the pressure to the Jewell trigger until it broke at 1.5 lbs and sent the 300 gr SMK down range at 2948 fps (yes, it is a +P but more on that later). I followed through with the shot and recovered from the slight recoil to see the shot impact the buck. I lost sight of right after while reloading, which proved to be totally unnecessary. The buck humped up from the impact that entered right at the front edge of the shoulder and exited just behind the back edge of the offside shoulder right at heart level. He staggered a couple of steps, went down and rolled over a couple of times totaling about 25 or 30 yards from the point of impact. We crossed the canyon to recover the buck. After the customary high fives and pats on the back we caped and bone him out. On our approach back to the shot location to retrieve the rest of our gear we were treated to a not so common sight. A sow grizzly and 3 cubs, zeroed in on the deer's carcass like a swarm of locusts. I set the camera back up and shot some footage of them. While we were all glued to anything with glass watching them they started moving in out direction. It didn't take long to see that the bears were on the same route we had packed the deer back up so wanting to avoid any bear conflicts we loaded our gear and hustled down off the mountain and back to the trucks.
Even though the hunt was very fast and furious it was one of the most fun and rewarding hunts I have been on. The best thing was having an outfitter that not only understood long range hunting but shaped the hunt to support it. I can't thank Selkirk Outfitters enough for taking care of it all and a special thanks to Brandon and Justin for all of the help.
www.selkirkoutfitters.com
All summer I have been teaching and practicing long range with as you probably guessed a 338 Edge. I was prepared to go 1500-1600 yards (assuming really good conditions) if I needed to, to anchor a good mule deer buck in the velvet. Anything in the 3 digit range and reasonable conditions was starting to look like a chip shot.
Well August 29th rolled around and I gathered up my mountain of long range hunting and filming gear and headed to my friend Brandon's house. Brandon is a good friend of mine and also a guide for Selkirk Outfitters. Brandon was the guy how put me in contact with Bruce Duncan the owner and hooked me up with the early season hunt. After unloading from my truck and loading to Brandon's we left for the Selkirk Outfitters Lodge in north Idaho. We arrived and met with Bruce, Bruce described the plan for the next day's events and we settled in for a steak dinner. Later that evening Justin showed up to come along as a packer for the next few days. We spent the rest of the evening dividing up all of my filming gear so everyone could share in the fun of carrying some of it up the mountain.
We rolled out of bed at 03:00 on the morning of the 30th and loaded our gear in Bruce's truck and headed out. We drove along in the dark for quite a way, stopped and unloaded all of our gear. We saddled up and started out, we climbed for over an hour to reach "buck basin". I setup the video camera and tune in my Recon using the Kestrel 3500. We drag out spotting scopes, binoculars and wait for it to get light enough to see. As it starts to get grey light and some of the major terrain features are distinguishable it becomes clear that the area is just absolutely beautiful and also a long range shooters paradise. It hadn't been light enough to glass for more than a minute or two when Justin spotted the first buck of the morning. After the first buck spotting everyone started spotting buck's faster than I could get film of them. About 16 or 17 minutes into this buck spotting frenzy someone, I am not sure who spots a buck that looks good in the binoculars and we all get on it. It doesn't take long the decided that even though this is the first 20 minutes of a 5 day hunting trip that this is the buck we are here for. I could see great mass, very tall overall height, and a handful of sticker points, just what the doctor ordered. I slid in behind my 338 Edge Canyon Rifle, I grabbed the PLRF 10 and instantly ranged him at 737 yards, I pressed the power button on the Recon and was instantly faced with the drop chart for the current conditions where I had left it. I dialed in the 13.50 moa elevation that the Exbal program called for and asked Brandon what he thought about the wind. Brandon and I agreed we had a tail wind of only 2-3 mph at our position and a very slight right to left wind in the canyon itself. By this time the buck had his head in a brush patch feeding and was only a step or two from disappearing, possibly for the rest of the day. I centered the NPR1 crosshairs of the Nightforce NXS 5.5-22 as close to the front shoulder as I could without crowding the tree in front of him to much and told Bruce who was on the spotting scope, "I'm on it." Bruce waited a couple of seconds and replied, "Send It". I applied the pressure to the Jewell trigger until it broke at 1.5 lbs and sent the 300 gr SMK down range at 2948 fps (yes, it is a +P but more on that later). I followed through with the shot and recovered from the slight recoil to see the shot impact the buck. I lost sight of right after while reloading, which proved to be totally unnecessary. The buck humped up from the impact that entered right at the front edge of the shoulder and exited just behind the back edge of the offside shoulder right at heart level. He staggered a couple of steps, went down and rolled over a couple of times totaling about 25 or 30 yards from the point of impact. We crossed the canyon to recover the buck. After the customary high fives and pats on the back we caped and bone him out. On our approach back to the shot location to retrieve the rest of our gear we were treated to a not so common sight. A sow grizzly and 3 cubs, zeroed in on the deer's carcass like a swarm of locusts. I set the camera back up and shot some footage of them. While we were all glued to anything with glass watching them they started moving in out direction. It didn't take long to see that the bears were on the same route we had packed the deer back up so wanting to avoid any bear conflicts we loaded our gear and hustled down off the mountain and back to the trucks.
Even though the hunt was very fast and furious it was one of the most fun and rewarding hunts I have been on. The best thing was having an outfitter that not only understood long range hunting but shaped the hunt to support it. I can't thank Selkirk Outfitters enough for taking care of it all and a special thanks to Brandon and Justin for all of the help.
www.selkirkoutfitters.com
