Howdy,

I just finished up the first week of lion hunting and now have a break over the holidays before the next one so figured I'd try to get everyone caught up.

A while back I mentioned that I was applying for an opportunity to be the outfitter on a mule deer trophy management area in southern Idaho and I've been anxiously awaiting the results of the Licensing Board's decision.  Yesterday I received a letter of rejection from them informing me that I was not selected.  That was disappointing but I have a hunch that it was one of those deals where they already knew who they were going to select before they announced the opportunity....but it was still worth a shot.

Since the last newsletter I sent out in early October we had another moose hunter and he killed a heckuva nice bull on the first day.  It's 40" wide which is good but doesn't tell the whole story.  He also had great palms, points and fronts, as well as long extra points growing straight out from the burr, which I've never seen before.  You'll be able to see them on the pictures I posted on my website.  The moose hunter also had an opportunity at a huge mule deer but we came up empty there.

Whitetail season was pretty disappointing.  There was little or no snow even in the high country which always makes for tough hunting here.  We did manage to take a few decent bucks and I've got those pictures on the website as well. 

The lion hunt we just finished went very well.  We had two hunters and they each got nice big toms.  One of them also took a good male bobcat that was one of the oldest I've ever seen based on the condition of his teeth.  The bobcat was fairly uncooperative in death forcing me to climb 35-40 feet up a huge cedar to dislodge him from the crotch of the tree he died in.  This winter I'm experimenting with using an atv with tracks in lieu of a snowmobile and so far I've been pretty happy with its performance.

I've recently had a couple cancellations on lion hunts for this winter and bear hunts next spring.  I'm going to hold off on filling the lion slots for a couple weeks until I've done some more hunting and have a feel for how many lions are around this year.  If I'm not having too much difficulty finding tracks then I'll go ahead and take one or two more hunters, otherwise I'll just leave them empty.  But if you talked with me about a lion hunt when I was booked full earlier, that situation may have changed so drop me a line if you're still interested.  I still have good availability for the spring bear hunts as well as deer next fall.

I finally got around to getting the photo gallery on the website caught up.  It now has the results of our hunts from last spring's bear hunts up through this most recent lion hunt.  The new pictures are the last couple on page 14 and all of page 15 of the photo gallery.

Thanks for reading and I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Clint Gray
Buckshot Outfitting
208-267-3885
www.buckshotoutfitting.com