Hey there, wanted to introduce myself. I live up in the northern part of the Idaho Panhandle. Moved here about 3 years ago from Central Oregon. Been bird hunting, big game hunting, fishing and trapping for the majority of my life. Always been a rifle hunter for big game. I switched from using a scope on my .308 to iron sights, to give me more of a challenge and force me to get closer to deer and elk. Well, I figured if I'm gonna do that I might as well switch to bow hunting. Longer seasons (at least here in Idaho) than rifle/any weapon season. I drew an archery pronghorn tag for the middle/end of September in southern Idaho and bought a starter bow (PSE Uprising) based on my budget, that I can learn on for a year or so, before buying a better one. Archery deer will also be going on during that pronghorn hunt, so I'll have two tags in my pocket. Have a buddy who is a lifelong bow hunter who's going to help me learn my form and help dial in my bow. But I am sure I will also have tons of questions here, so just a fair warning to you all. If you get sick of the questions, let me know. I'm about as green as they come to bow hunting. I've shot compound bows before, but it's been about 7 or 8 years.
Welcome and seems like you have a good background for hunting. Questions are how we learn. I ask my wife questions all the time. That's how I learn.
Thanks guys. JohnT... I'm guessing you don't find yerself in the doghouse too often huh? Probably in your best interest, but being good just isn't fun sometimes haha.
Bumper sticker- Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go just about everywhere. Being good can be boring at times. Wife and I made it 47 years last month. She is good about tolerating my hobbies. Keeps asking when I'm going to get a cheap hobby. Anyone know of one?
Welcome! I'm from Idaho too, south of you in Lewiston. Good luck with the antelope, I've always told myself I'd like to go down south and try for one with a bow but haven't ever got around to it. A friend has done it a few times, he either sits in a blind or has had some luck with finding a bedded buck just over the rise of a hill and then stalks into range from the back side of the hill. He got is his first one that way, shot it from about 30 yards. He said that everyone talks about how good their eyesight is, but it doesn't sink in until you see in person how far away they'll spook from. Since you're getting into archery hunting, DO NOT miss out on September elk hunting when they rut. There is no comparison to it.
Thanks Mod-it. I spend a lot of time during upland bird season down your way on the breaks. Nice country you got down there. We're way too thick with trees up here but I do like it a lot. Yeah archery elk during the rut is going to be a blast - and a learning experience, I'm sure. Fortunately, there's still a few elk around, despite all the wolves.
On the breaks...chasing chukar are you? They sure are good eating, but they'd better be for the kind of country they live in lol. About the wolves, ain't that the truth. It is hit and miss for us on whether the elk are vocal or not. If wolves are nearby, they just won't talk when trying to use locator bugles. The area I hunt them in 8a is very thick too and you have to get into the thick stuff with them and use soft cow calls to have a chance. Not near as exciting as it used to be when they would scream their heads off and it was easy to locate a few bulls. They still do that sometimes, but it seems like it is very hit and miss now.
Sorry for the super delayed reply Mod-It... yeah chukar on the breaks and yes that country is brutally steep and rugged. Really too bad about the wolves. I mean I'm really not the "kill em all" type but the 1,000+ wolves we have in the state is waaay too many. I try to make a very small dent in the wolf population with trapping but I'm afraid it's too little too late. About all we can do is help to keep their numbers from exploding even more than they already have. You know your state has too many wolves when the number one killer of wolves in that state is actually other wolves.
The wolves are going to be darn hard to manage IMO...hunting them just isn't going to make much of an impact. 100 years ago they had to poison them out. Trapping I think has the best chance, other than when the F&G decides there's too many in an area and takes a helicopter out. I bear bait in the spring in unit 11, my sister and I have 106 acres of property in that unit. This year for the first time I got some game cam pics on our place of a couple wolves. The first one was a mature big one, it came in to the bear bait site in the middle of the night. Then in the early summer I always put a cam on our spring, I normally get some good elk in velvet pics off of it, and got a pic of another wolf, a younger one. Not excited to see them starting to show up on our place. Elk are draw only and unit 11 is pretty much a trophy bull unit, so drawing a bull tag is pretty low odds...I've put in for it since I was 12 and haven't ever drawn it...but I do 95% of my whitetail hunting on it. Perhaps I'll get lucky and see a wolf when sitting in the ladder stand this year. It is an any weapons season, but I normally bring my sidelock just because I love shooting them, or my bow here and there. Did you see that "study" that the Idaho F&G put out recently? They claim that cougars are actually killing more elk than the wolves are. Kind of funny to me for them to show that and then act like it shows that wolves aren't the major impact for the elk population decline. If it's even true that cougar are taking more elk than wolves, they'll never convince me that it isn't a by product of wolves. When I was in my twenties I knew several people that had hounds and ran bear and cougar, and I'd see lots of other people I didn't know running around with dog boxes in their rigs. Now I don't know a single person that still runs hounds and it's much rarer to see a rig with a dog box. The majority of them quit running hounds once they saw, heard, or had their own encounter with wolves tearing up a pack of hounds and killing all of them. No one wants to see that happen so they just got out of it. So now the main way and best chance to harvest cougar to control their numbers is going by the way side. It is also impacting the success rate on bears too, which take their fair share of elk calves. The wolf advocates always like to use Yellowstone as an example, before wolves the elk population was out of control and now with wolves it is in check and showing a much better impact on the ecosystem...but Yellowstone has always been no hunting so humans are removed from the food chain there. Not a fair comparison due to this. Sorry about my long winded rant...I sure do worry about what kind of things my son is going to face in trying to hunt during his lifetime.
They tried to introduce wolves into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was a disaster. Cars were their worst enemy since the park is the most visited in the country, resulting in horrific traffic. I was told the last wolf drank antifreeze in a parking lot. Several years ago, I fished the Middle Prong Little River and was told the pens were still in the backcountry.
Good to have you here. BTW, I'm a great source of advice on archery hunting, but don't rely on it! LOL
Mod-it, actually yes the lions are taking more elk than wolves. That is true. But you want to know why? Because lions make a kill on an elk and more often than not the wolves are there to run them off the kill. Forcing the lion to go kill again, likely only to be run off again by wolves or if they are lucky they get to eat some of their kill before the wolves run them off. So yeah it's like you said, it's still a by-product of the wolves. I am not the type to blame the wolves themselves. They are just animals doing what their instincts tell them to. I blame poor management practices and not letting us start harvesting them before their numbers got out of control. On a positive note, your piece of property you and your sister have sounds incredible. I spend quite a bit of time down in unit 11 for grouse and chukar hunting with the dogs.
I agree on the wolves...I blame the folks that pushed them on us and the management of them as well. We really enjoy the property, camp on it most of the summer, get all our firewood from it (and there's still a lot of windfalls and snags to clean up). I hunt grouse, turkey, bear, coyote, and whitetail on it. On top of that, right across from ours my aunt & uncle have another 300 acres that I can hunt on too. Makes it nice, I only have to hunt on public land for elk. Sometimes I do some whitetail hunting in my public land elk area if I located a nice buck while elk hunting that I want to target.
Oh wow that's nice to be able to have a slice of heaven like that. And to be able to have those resources available to you. Firewood, meat and fur. That's how life's meant to be lived.
