Wednesday, June 04, 2003 7:02 PMSent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 7:02 PM Subject: Buckshot Outfitting Newsletter 1 Hello, I've decided to start a database of people interested in receiving occasional updates on the hunting here at Buckshot Outfitting in northern Idaho. The problem I ran into is that I've got almost 1,000 e-mail addresses and I don't know who would be interested and who wouldn't. The e-mail address for the person my wife corresponded with about purchasing a Diaper Genie may be right above the address for someone interested in a lion hunt but try as I might, I cannot remember who's who! I used to catalog all hunting information requests I received by species of interest and that would have served me well in building this list, unfortunately our computer recently crashed and I lost all of those e-mails but was able to salvage the address book. So this is how I've started. I went through the entire address book and put everyone on the list except the ones I knew would not be interested. So if you're a retired knitting instructor from Tahiti and the vice-president of your local PETA chapter, please accept my apology. If you'll just reply to this e-mail with "Remove" in the body I'll get you off the list immediately. Or you may receive more than one copy of this e-mail if you were in my address book more than once. Again, let me know and I'll get it straightened out. I'm gonna apologize one more time to anyone who receives this e-mail that didn't want to, but I do promise to get you off the list if you'll notify me. But if you don't notify me I'll assume you want to continue receiving it. The mailings you receive should not overburden your inbox, I'm thinking there will be an update once or twice a year, and I may use the list to notify you of last minute hunt openings that are available at a discount. Pheww, OK, that should take care of the preliminaries. Now I'm going to give you a quick summary of how the hunts have gone the past year, starting with archery '02 and ending with spring bear '03, and also let you know what's available for the upcoming year. I considered including photos from some of the hunts but in the interest of quick downloads I decided against it. I started a photo gallery on the website a year or two ago and am all caught up on it. I just added this spring's bear pictures to page 6 of the photo gallery at www.buckshotoutfitting.com . Archery Whitetail '02 I'm still booking very few archery hunts and it's really a good opportunity to take home a nice whitetail. The highlight of the archery season was a tall, heavy 4x4 that grossed about 138. Bob Poletski (CA) was hunting here when I shot it and it was great getting to share the experience with him. Bob arrowed a nice buck on the third night of his hunt but we were unable to recover it. Jon Hill (NV) was my only other archery hunter and he did not get a chance to fill his tag. Jon's an ol' mule deer hunter from the desert and I think he was surprised at how cagey these whitetails can be. Plenty of dates remain open for archery season '03. Rifle Whitetail '03 Mild weather made for some difficult November whitetail hunting. The rut never seemed to kick into high gear and much of the deer activity was nocturnal. Nevertheless, Kevin Mellott (PA) managed to take a dandy 140 class 5x5 and Steve Dubin (CA) also took a nice 5x5, both the last week of the season. This is the third time Steve has hunted with me during Thanksgiving week and all 3 times he's shot a nice buck on Thanksgiving morning between 7:00 and 7:30 A.M. I'm sure you can imagine Steve's making noise about booking a pro-rated one-hour hunt.....I told him no way though! We also took several smaller bucks earlier in the season. After 5 very mild winters in a row there's getting to be a really good crop of big bucks out there now. I still have openings during the prime last couple weeks of November. Mountain Lion '02-'03 This was the first year that I went back to guiding in Montana since coming to Idaho. Dad came over to help me out and we spent the first week of December around Noxon with 3 hunters. Despite poor conditions all 3 hunters filled their tags, although we went to the final day of the hunt to get "Hard Luck Johnny" tagged out! Thomas Schifflett of Virginia took the big tom of the week there. Next Dad and I moved down the road just a bit to Plains where we had one more hunter. He also got a pretty nice tom. The first week of December is filled for this winter but I can still take 2 hunters for the second week. Montana lion tags must be purchased by 8/31 so if it's something you're interested in please don't wait too long. I deliberately cut back on the lion hunts I booked for Idaho because we had some difficulty finding cats the year before. I took only two hunters here in Idaho and both tagged toms. Frank Darcey (UT) took a real dandy after climbing a mighty steep hill (right Frank ;-)). I had actually intended to take one more hunter but the freakishly mild winter prevented us from even attempting it, so Steve Morris (MT) traded in the lion hunt he purchased for bear hunts for he and his girlfriend Sandy. I have one more opening for an Idaho lion hunt this winter. Spring Bear '03 I took a total of 6 spring bear hunters this year and 5 of them tagged a bear. Mike VanDerWeele (PA) took the largest, a monster 6 1/2 foot black that we had to cut up into little pieces to get out of the woods. The aforementioned Sandy took her first big game critter, and she didn't mess around either, with a big 6' black. Both of those bears, as well as a very pretty blonde taken by Corey Anderson (AZ) were taken via spot and stalk methods. Steve took a beautiful long-haired 5' boar (kind of a chocolate) over bait and Ron Krettler (OR) shot a red-blonde female over bait. All had excellent hides other than some rubbing on the shoulders of Ron's bear. The one hunter that did not get his bear ran out of patience after not seeing a bear mid-way through his hunt and choosing to fly home early. It was his first hunting experience and I feel very badly that it was not a more positive one. I was relieved to hear that he's planning a deer hunt in his home state of California for this fall though, so at least I didn't cure him of hunting completely. I've never baited in the fall before but I'm still allowed two more hunts in that unit for this year so if I could line up a couple hunters I'd like to give it a whirl. I'm told that it's at least as productive as the spring baiting and some believe it's better. I could also take one spot and stalk hunter this fall. The spring season for next year is wide open at this time, although several folks are talking about booking. Elk? I've spoken with some of you about my efforts to gain additional territory in a good elk-hunting area. About all I can say is that there's miles of red tape involved and I'm somewhere in the middle of it now. I definitely won't have elk hunting to offer for this year but I'm crossing my fingers for 2004. I'll keep you posted if there's any change. Accommodations After too many frustrating years of renting, we're finally closing on our own home this week. It's just a bit further north than where we are now but still on our outfitting territory. It's a pretty cool (at least I think so) log cabin on 5 acres. What makes it perfect though, is another cabin built on the property. It's been recently constructed but is just a roof and 4 walls at the moment so I'll be spending my spare time (and money) this summer turning it into a bunkhouse. It'll have a couple bedrooms and at least one bathroom, heat, electricity, etc. The set-up we have now isn't bad but this will be considerably better I think. The End Well, I guess that about covers it. Thanks for wading through and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. As I've already mentioned, all of this year's photos are in the photo gallery of the website if you're interested.
Sincerely, Clint Gray |