OTC Elk: DIY Central Idaho Over The Counter Elk Hunt

Beautiful alpine scenery to be expected in central Idaho!

My Idaho Hunting Ideas

For me it all started ten or so years ago. My family has come to understand elk hunting in northern Nevada reasonably well. I love to uncover little gems of low-pressure nooks and overlooked crannies in the hunting world. Combine those two little items with a heavy dose of adventure and treasure-hunting mentality and it was only a matter of time before we explored over-the-counter (OTC) elk elsewhere.

The southern border of Idaho intrigues me greatly. I’ve always loved the Owyhee and Y-P deserts and the beautiful canyons that gouge them. The Bruneau, Owyhee, and Jarbidge are legendary wild rivers. Some lesser known but no less spectacular canyons include Sheep Creek, the Little Owyhee, Jacks Creek, and Mary’s Creek. This is truly wild land and it calls to me like no other. I have been drooling over controlled elk and deer opportunities in these areas for years, but the abundance of Nevada tags for my family have kept my appetite in check, until recently.

The Connection to Idaho

Reflecting on the hike and the remaining options. Beautiful scenery inescapable.

My daughter Amanda received a four-year soccer scholarship to the College of Idaho and moved to Idaho in 2010. She is part of this story, as she gave up her opportunities to hunt as a youth because of her excellence in soccer. So, after 10 years of missing out on hunting due to soccer, she finally got her chance to become a hunter. She made the most of it, taking three elk, two deer, and an antelope in short order.

Her becoming hooked on hunting rekindled my curiosity about Idaho. She wanted advice on controlled hunts and I couldn’t be happier to have this research project. Ultimately, she drew an Idaho controlled hunt and killed a beautiful mature four-point mule deer. Although that is another story, it begets this one.

OTC Elk Neophytes

I don’t think I’m alone in my confusion over OTC elk opportunities. Look at the success statistics and you might wonder why bother. The difference between Idaho OTC and Nevada limited draw hunts is epic. In Idaho, your OTC hunts will include thousands of other hunters in your area! In Nevada, this happens in only one or two areas in the whole state! Nevada and most western states’ controlled or draw hunts take years upon years to gain a tag. When you do receive it, you have a high-quality DIY hunt on your hands. OTC tags are the complete opposite. You get to hunt every year, but the age class of the average harvested animal is pathetic and the competition is fierce.

The good news is that Idaho contains a ridiculous amount of superb elk habitat, so what it lacks in inches of horn or age-class, it makes up for in sheer numbers of animals. Amanda checked with some friends and was able to score an OTC elk tag for the Sawtooth zone two seasons ago. This hunt was relatively good, with us seeing dozens of elk every day, but having trouble getting on a mature bull. This is truly an amazing zone, and it seems like it will be moved to the “controlled” hunt status this year due to popularity.

We were able to spot elk from a distance without hiking tens of miles. Our hikes were more on the order of three to five miles each and we were in elk every day. We even got to see some relatively big bulls in the 320 to 340 class, although one we saw was being gutted four miles away by a guy in an orange hat! As OTC tags go, the Sawtooth zone provides very good opportunities. As a controlled tag, it should continue to offer some excellent hunting as well.

A Different Approach

In 2017, we changed plans. With the Sawtooth tag procurement rivaling the first four big screen TV purchases at Walmart on Black Friday, we were done with that area. As I researched various areas, my daughter started to home in on the McCall zone. She went ahead and bought the tag, and a very gracious friend of mine offered her access to their cabin for the hunt.

Hoping to catch elk coming out in the evening, but just can’t avoid the spectacular scenery.

We did some homework and checked with others who hunted the area. We checked Eastman’s Hunting Journal, and the Idaho Fish and Game hunt planner. Idaho’s hunt planner and statistics lookup are truly awesome and I advise you to use this resource. We developed a plan A and a plan B for the hunt.

Rolling With the Punches

Our team rolled into McCall on a beautiful Thursday afternoon late in October. We stowed our gear in our cabin and headed for Plan A country. We passed through some excellent country, but the area we ended in was really promising. One slippery wet area on a high steep hillside scared me a bit. I’m no stranger to tough 4WD work, but the consequences of a fail here were dramatic. We negotiated it with ease, but it stuck in my mind for future reference. We went to bed that night knowing snow was in the forecast, but optimism won out and we planned an early wake.

Snow! Holy crap, there was six inches of snow at 4:00 am and it was coming down hard. We ducked our heads and moved to Plan B, as there was no way I was taking that high mountain road of Plan A that morning. Plan B turned up a dead elk collected by a father-son team and a cheery discussion of the country. We were wildly out of our depth in the Plan B area, so we reluctantly tucked our tails for a late morning coffee at our luxury “camp”.

Plan C

So there I am sipping coffee in a ridiculously beautiful McCall cabin, contemplating how best to get my butt back out into snow and 20-degree weather. Accumulations were around a foot by this point. We only had five or six hours left in the day, so I improvised. Google told me there was a place not too far from town that had a trail or two and some old burn areas. What did we have to lose?

Slogging in 10 inches of snow up a mountain brought a smile to my face. It is always satisfying to me to beat back the elements to pursue big game. I was in my element, and we had a chance. When we finally got out of the danged trees and could see, we dug out our glass and set up. It wasn’t five minutes before my eagle-eye wife, Tammy spotted an elk at long range lying in the snow. With the afternoon coming to an end and our uphill prospects dwindling at the time, we called it a day. We had rallied to formulate Plan C on the fly and had a modicum of success.

Plan C Again

The following morning, we had an extra hunter friend of my daughters joining us from Boise. We made the predawn hike on a frigid morning with headlamps glowing. Our tracks were faintly visible in the new snow. We reached our glassing spot just about sunrise, which is about thirty minutes late in my book. Oh well, we started glassing and again my wife found a herd of cow elk in the basin below us.

With that group was a very small bull, a spike-by-something. Not bad, but not what my daughter was interested in at that point. Not a whole lot of time passed by before my wife and our new hunting partner found another elk at about the same time. This time, I quickly verified that we had a 300-class 6-point bull below us.

Tenacity

My daughter didn’t take a very long time to decide to make that hunt. It would be my wife’s and my job to keep an eye on the situation and basically stay out of the way! The hunters made their plan and started toward the herd on their chosen line. I didn’t envy them this “stalk” in a foot of snow in the Idaho mountain underbrush. Yikes! My wife and I stood on that ridgetop in blowing snow in 20-degree weather and started to realize we weren’t hiking anymore. Hell, we were standing there getting cold!

We paced to stay warm. We paced a lot. I think we paced about three hours and I’m here to tell you that you can only pace just so long before that place gets slippery. Ok, I digress, but secretly I was a little worried that these darned hunters would maybe kill that big bull down in that miserable little basin. I was also excited and anticipating that rifle report that signaled success and the start of the work. Instead, we finally got a break in radio silence to let us know they had finished and wouldn’t be pulling the trigger this time.

It turns out they got close to the bigger bull when the other herd moved in on them. They found themselves nearly surrounded and had that little spike bull at 30 yards! My daughter elected not to take that bull on that day, even through the excitement of their close encounter with those elk. I was so proud of her stalk and also the maturity of her decision!

What Now: OTC Elk?

Taking time to celebrate friendships and enjoy the help!

We did this hunt again in 2018.  We had an absolute blast and found the elk, but we couldn’t find the bulls. It rained and rained on us and visibility was always a problem. We had a blast and created so many sore muscles. So this was year three in our Idaho OTC experiment, and we are learning as we go. My daughter passed on a legal bull one year, and two years saw her with no opportunity. Clearly, it is a matter of time before she tags her first OTC bull.

I will continue to research the areas in Idaho and learn the best approaches to gain success. I understand that truly big bulls are hard to come by in OTC areas, but I know also that they are there. If I take a huge bull in Nevada every 17 years of waiting for the tag, will the same 17 years yield a huge Idaho bull? I think it probably will, as we will put that 17 years to a lot of hard thinking and learning.

OTC elk hunting mustn’t be looked at as successful or unsuccessful based on the filling of the tag. It mustn’t hinge on antler length. The success of the Idaho or any OTC hunt is just as with any hunt: it is about the pursuit and the sharing of memories and adventure with ones you love. The memories are the true trophies of the hunt.