Oct. 24–HILL CITY, Idaho — Some of the trucks pouring out of the mountains on Oct. 13 hauled horse trailers. Some carried ATVs. All announced success or failure by choosing a lane of traffic cones.
One lane for hunters who harvested deer on the opening weekend of Idaho’s regular deer season. One lane for those who didn’t.
But even in the latter was a lot of satisfaction.
“I saw some big bucks in (Unit) 44,” California hunter David Woolley told a conservation officer at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game check station north of Gooding. Admiration colored Woolley’s voice as he described a deer. “That’s what you come to Idaho for. He was a big boy.”
On Oct. 12-13, Fish and Game’s Magic Valley office set up three check stations –north of Gooding, west of Fairfield and at the Timmerman junction — where biologists and conservation officers checked more than 500 hunters and 190 deer.
They collected biological data, measured hunter success and surveyed opinions on game tags for landowners.
“The greatest benefit to us is being able to hear from many of the hunters we don’t communicate with regularly,” said Randy Smith, regional wildlife manager.
The lanes of traffic cones were rarely empty at his check station — the one just off U.S. Highway 20, west of Fairfield and Hill City — on the afternoon of Oct. 13. Here, three tales from that check station:
1) The Brag Board
Outside the camp trailer that served as check station headquarters, a small table held survey clipboards, data sheets, knives, vials, rule books and boxes of disposable gloves. Propped among all that was a pinboard of snapshots — hunters with their harvested deer.
K.C. Hills of Jerome stopped by to see whether his hunting buddy’s buck was on the brag board. It was.
“Is that the biggest one so far?” Hills asked, showing more photos on his cellphone to Jerome Hansen, Fish and Game regional supervisor.
Hills and his buddy spotted the buck during archery season. So when the regular deer season opened, they knew right where to be.
“We popped him on opening morning and couldn’t believe it,” Hills told Hansen. “That’s a lot of nice deer.”
Minutes later, Hansen photographed Kayla Brown of Jerome holding the head of her first deer. In that snapshot, her camouflage sweat shirt is paired with a new diamond ring, and her fiance, Callie Peterson of Jerome, stands with his arm around her shoulders.
Peterson proposed at Grouse Creek, Brown said. He told her to watch woodpeckers through their binoculars, and when she turned around he was on his knee.
Hansen disappeared briefly into the camp trailer, which Fish and Game stocks with a photo printer and a pot of chili, then emerged with two copies of the photo. One for the brag board, and one for Brown.
She’s not likely to forget that hunting trip.
2) Lymph Nodes and Bio Data
In a world of pickups, the Nissan Altima looked out of place.
But in the trunk, coolers packed with ice held the meat from two bucks — shot within an hour of each other in Unit 43 by Jennifer Sturgill of Mountain Home and her 14-year-old daughter, Caitlin Sturgill.
Caitlin made her shot from 137 yards, her mom said. “She did an awesome job.”
The bucks’ heads were wrapped in plastic and well taped. But mother and daughter unwrapped them for wildlife veterinarian Mark Drew to cut out the lymph nodes. Stored in vials, the lymph nodes would be tested later for chronic wasting disease — which has never been detected in Idaho, Drew said.
That day, Fish and Game workers also measured antler lengths and the depth of fat at sternum. If deer were only field dressed and not cut up, biologists weighed them too. The data help to quantify nutrition and the deer population’s condition going into winter, Smith said.
When Oregon 14-year-old Austin Stallard shot a very thin deer that hadn’t shed the velvet on his antlers, his hunting companions knew something was wrong. They called a conservation officer who advised them to bring out the buck whole, or with as many organs as possible.
When the hunting party pulled into the check station Oct. 13, Drew was ready.
On a tarp in the parking lot, Drew pulled back the dead buck’s skin and opened the body for a necropsy. As colleagues and hunters watched, Drew swiftly lifted out organs, cutting open some of them and occasionally sharpening his knife on a steel.
The lungs held the secret: pneumonia.
Offered a duplicate deer tag and another chance to harvest, Austin opted instead to go home with the antlers of his buck. The deciding factor was a misshapen point on the antlers.
Saying little, Austin pointed to the strange 90-degree angle, still covered in velvet.
3) Mistakes and Warnings
Jeff Conant of Nampa shot a doe this month. And he tagged it — but not with his 2013 deer tag.
He’d mistakenly thrown away that one, along with his 2013 hunting license, thinking he was discarding his 2012 license and tag.
At the check station, regional conservation officer Josh Royse verified the 2013 purchases then decided Conant’s mistake was an honest one. Conant voluntarily came through the check station and wasn’t trying to hide anything, Royse said.
So Royse gave Conant a warning instead of a citation.
“I want to make sure it’s very clear that you’re done hunting this year,” Royse said.
Fish and Game officers “are afforded a significant amount of discretion,” he explained later. “We’re out here to catch the people who are breaking the rules on purpose.”
The day before, a hunter who shot a small buck instead of a doe had driven out of his way to turn himself in at the check station. Royse gave him a warning and confiscated the antlers.
“In hunting, honest mistakes happen,” he said. “And we reward honesty.”
When Chad Marx’s Ford pulled into the check station Oct. 13, three deer lay among the hay bales on the Ford: a doe shot by the Nampa man’s wife, his son’s buck and his own buck.
“It’s the first time we’ve tagged out in four or five years,” Laurie Marx said. Taking horses this year made that easier.
But when the Marxes quartered the deer to pack them out on horseback, they forgot to leave evidence of sex attached to the carcasses. They, too, got a warning from Royse — and brief anatomical instructions.
“I can guarantee you they’ll be attached next year,” Chad Marx said.