BONNERS FERRY, Idaho — A death-bed confession of sorts inspired Logan Hyrkas to organize a hunt for mountain deer in Idaho’s Panhandle during the first half of November.
The hot tip originated something like this: Hyrkas, 31, chatted up a customer in August 2016 while working at a North Dakota car dealership. Hyrkas grew up in the small town of Calumet, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but moved to the West because he loves hunting mule deer.
As Hyrkas and the customer swapped deer hunting stories that August day, the man stunned him by sharing the GPS coordinates for his favorite hunting site in Idaho’s Panhandle. He said mule deer converge on a secluded ridgetop meadow each November after the first heavy snows. He told Hyrkas he’d shot several bucks with antlers measuring 30 inches between the main beams.
The man urged Hyrkas to snowshoe to the ridgetop and hunt his coordinates. He had no further use for them. He said he had an aggressive terminal cancer and wouldn’t see another hunting season. He wasn’t lying. When Hyrkas tried looking him up two months later, he found only his obituary, announcing his death at 63.
Hyrkas eventually moved back to the U.P., but the homecoming didn’t last. When he found himself yearning for the Badlands and mule deer, he led his young family back to North Dakota earlier this year to stay.
The move also put Hyrkas within a day’s drive of the dead man’s GPS coordinates, a bit south of the Canadian border. Hyrkas’ notes from his lone conversation with the dying man rekindled his imagination: “Abandoned Forest-Service road takes you to the mountaintop. Wait after a big blizzard and snowshoe in. The bucks come and play in the open fields like little kids when they get all kinds of snow.”
And so it was that Hyrkas recruited his father, Ken Hyrkas; father-in-law, Jay Dunstan; older brother, Zane Hyrkas; and your faithful correspondent to join him for a two-week deer hunt starting Nov. 1.
Ten days into our hunt, I can report with near certainty that we would have fared better had Hyrkas somehow gathered us to hunt 20 years ago when he was 11 years old. It also might have helped to start hunting a week or two later, though we all had scheduling conflicts with Thanksgiving and home-state deer seasons in Michigan and Wisconsin.
And yes, although we’ve benefited from snow instead of rain when hunting above 4,000 feet in the mountains, we haven’t needed snowshoes. Maybe that’s why we’ve seen no bucks partying on snowy mountaintops.
We also base our slow start on what locals tell us when hearing we’ve seen few muleys and whitetails; and just a handful of bucks, all young. Although the Panhandle’s high-country forests are vast and rugged, we’re told they no longer hold as many older bucks as they did during the previous century.
Locals mostly blame wolves for these presumed scarcities, but also cite grizzly bears and two-legged hunters, many of whom (like us) converge here from points far eastward. Whatever the case, we’re told it’s rare to see a wide-racked buck in these parts anymore, especially those with four or more tines per antler.
Our host, for example, a man in his mid-50s, has killed several big muleys in the Panhandle, including two full-shoulder mounts in the Airbnb we’re renting. But when asked for dates or other specifics about his bucks, the man’s memory seemingly fogs. “He just said it’s been a while,” Hyrkas said. “When I asked him (for more specifics) he thought about it and said, ‘Yeah it’s been a few years for sure.’”
Instead of squeezing the landlord harder for information, Hyrkas studied his onX Hunt navigation app for more clues about the bucks’ mountaintop meadows and ridgeline playgrounds. He then hiked to the dead man’s site repeatedly for over a week, a 5-mile roundtrip, not counting the still-hunts and scouting forays once on site.
He dragged Dunstan along a couple of times, too, apparently trying to cripple or kill his father-in-law before his time. I made that hike a week later, but gladly let the long-striding Hyrkas glide ahead on his own after he shared the best route to the sacred 5,500-foot GPS coordinates.
Minutes after completing my two-hour ascent, I watched a cow moose crest a hilltop 200 yards away. I took photos and recorded videos as the moose strolled along, dismissing me as a harmless spectator. She was the last mammal I saw that day.
Meanwhile, Zane Hyrkas and Dunstan shot two 4-by-3 muley bucks while hunting Nov. 7 and 8 in mountains farther to the southwest. Both bucks created memorable moments for the men, especially once dead. Zane’s buck died about 50 yards down an impossibly steep ravine, and Dunstan’s buck died inside a ridiculously dense bottomlands thicket. Zane said it was the hardest 50 yards he’s ever dragged a deer, and Dunstan said his buck would still be where it fell had he not quartered it for extraction.
As the hunt’s 10th day recedes into fog and drizzle, our hopes of fresh snow and gathering bucks fade with the weather forecast. Our final four days in Idaho promise only prolonged fog and drizzle/sleet at best, and heavy rains at worst.
But this is hunting, and we’re not complaining. Even dead men can’t make the weather mesh with our rigid schedules and wishful thinking.
The Idaho Panhandle’s mountain deer mostly stayed out of sight after five hunters drove in from Wisconsin and Michigan, hoping to chase down a dying man’s hot tip from seven years before. — Patrick Durkin photo
Zane Hyrkas of Calumet, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, shot this 4-by-3 mule deer buck in Idaho’s Panhandle.