A few times I've enjoyed an interesting alternative to crowded weekend deer hunting: use a boat on any of Idaho's big reservoirs to get away from the competition. With a boat you can make a one-day trip of it, hunting up-canyon from the back of any promising cove. Or you can load up with camping gear, run across the reservoir, and pitch a base camp for a multi-day effort. I especially like the shore-camping approach to mule deer hunting. It lets me get in a little bass fishing when I'm too pooped to chase deer around those slopes any more!
The one bad part about hunting deer out of a shoreline camp is that it's all uphill to the game. You have to roll out of the sack before dawn, have your breakfast and coffee, and start puffing directly upslope. Other than easing up a gentle ravine bottom, there's just no other way to get up there. And brother, those south Idaho reservoir slopes can be nearly vertical!
The flip side of this bad news is that when you nail a fat buck up high (or wind up skunked), it's at least all downhill back to camp. Even if you drop a deer several miles downshore, just drag it downhill to water's edge, hike the shoreline back to camp, and boat back down to pick up your game.
Good reservoirs for this kind of bat-camp hunting and bass fishing include Brownlee, Oxbow, Lucky Peak, Arrowrock, Anderson Ranch, and a few places on C. J. Strike. I imagine all sorts of other impoundments around Idaho are equally good, but I'm not familiar with them personally. (I understand whitetail hunters also use this method well up at Dworshak.)
Mainly you're looking for deer-holding slopes well away from road hunters. There's no point in boating way up a lake, hoofing up a steep hill, and running smack into hunters coming down from easy road access above. Just check out a detailed map of any reservoir you're considering hunting, then go to those big blank spots where the roads don't!
Once you bag your buck and drag it down to the lakeshore, you can rest in camp while your less-fortunate pals keep hustling their own venison. This is my favorite situation, a kind of peaceful suspension of time when I can fish by myself with no sense or urgency. Sometimes you can even sit offshore in a boat, rod in hand, and grin at your buddies 600 yards uphill, tiny points of color clawing their way around treacherous talus slides while you're sipping a cold one and taking it easy on padded boat cushions.
For hardcore October hunters who've never tried combining deer hunting and bass fishing, you've got an experience coming. This month is one of the year's best for bass, both smallmouth and largemouth. Reservoir waters are cooling, and fish tend to feed eagerly all day rather than just at dawn and dusk as in summer months. Weather is pleasantly cool-warm and stable, so you're not sweltering on flat water even at high noon or worrying about a thunderstorm building in the west.
If bass plugging is too rigorous for you after all that venison-gathering effort, break out some worms and settle down for a little effortless bait fishing. Besides bass, most south-Idaho reservoirs also contain hungry populations of crappie, catfish, bluegills, and trout, and almost nobody will be fishing for them in October besides you.
Copyright 2003, Spring Creek Communications
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