Idaho Muley Hunt

Filming a solo hunt can be one of the most difficult things to accomplish, especially when you're trying to harvest a mature mule deer buck. Tom Schneider with Stuck in The Rut, re-lives a fall hunt he won't soon forget.

Tom "It's been pretty mild so I'm like, well I'm going to have to go in the high country and I made the hike about 2:30 in the morning and hiked for about 2 hours. Those muley's will go around and browse and chase the doe's and about 2 hours after sunlight, they'll timber up, so you can kind of catch them in the openings in the first part of light. As soon as I hit about 4600-4700 ft. elevation, I started hitting mule deer tracks. Which is a little bit strange, because that's pretty low. As I got higher, I got into less mule deer sign but I was still seeing some roaming buck tracks where you could see a buck had passed through. In some openings toward the top of the mountain I glassed, I had a little rattle bag with me so I pulled that out and started rattling 5 minutes on and 5 minutes off. It was starting to get cold so I started hiking a little bit, as I got my bag on a mule deer buck walked out in the opening about 80 yards. I pulled the scope and saw the mass and saw his points, and was like I think I need to be shooting. He was a little more concerned about my presence and he actually started to walk back into the timber. I stopped him with my mouth, I made a couple of noises with my mouth. He stopped broadside and I shot him and he collapsed. I boned him out and packed him off the mountain."