Hunt of a lifetime

A month after bagging the mule deer that ended what could be a once-in-a-lifetime sportsman’s odyssey, Jim Parker’s desk at Parker Toyota is piled with enough work to eliminate any time for gloating, even if he were prone to doing so.

“Some people might not understand what this is all about,” he said, a bit tentative to talk about an Idaho sportsman’s dream season.

But his father understands.

“We spent 43 days together hunting,” said his father, Doug Parker, as proudly as if he were referring to their very first father-son hunt nearly three decades ago. “That’s the most time I’ve spent with my son since he was born. It was an incredible experience.”

The Parkers have always devoted a good chunk of the fall to hunts that have taken them as far away as Alaska and Siberia. Doug Parker bought his son one of the first lifetime Idaho hunting licenses — No. 16 to be exact — when the state began offering them in the mid-80s.

This year, however, their routine exploded when Jim was notified in mid-August that he was one of two hunters to be awarded the new “Super Slam Pak,” enabling him to hunt four major big-game species virtually anywhere hunting was allowed in the state.

To put that in perspective, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most hunters who draw a single-species tag for a single coveted hunting unit.

Parker had applied unsuccessfully in Idaho’s first-ever “super slam” drawing, which was held in June and won by a man from Colorado.

As if to thumb his nose at luck, he bought 13 lottery tickets and won the second “super slam” lottery, held in August.

Idaho Fish and Game officials said more than 30,000 super tag tickets were sold, but they had no figure for the odds since each hunter could buy multiple tickets.

Parker didn’t have much time to revel in the news that he’d won the lottery.

“It was late August and the first seasons started Sept. 1,” he said. “That didn’t leave much time to scout or get organized. I knew it would be a commitment, but I didn’t realize how much.”

Elk were his first target. With the bugling season getting under way, he and his father traveled in the first week of September to the Salmon Region, which has a record of producing a high percentage of mature bulls. The area was open only to archery hunting at that time.

“I gave it a try,” Parker said. “We saw elk, but no big ones. I know this was my one chance, so Dad and I went down to Owyhee Unit 41, where rifle hunting was open.”

Parker abandoned the archery equipment and took up his .300 Remington ultra-mag to hunt the high sage-desert.

Statistically, that was a no-brainer. Only five rifle hunters a year have been allowed to hunt in the September season in this wild southwestern corner of Idaho. Logistically, however, the prospects were daunting.

“The area is huge and getting around is difficult,” Parker said. “It’s so rugged and remote down there, some ranches still don’t have power.”

Even though he had never hunted the area, he had enough hunting experience to know where to start.

“I got on the phone and started calling friends,” he said. “I called everyone I could think of who might know a friend of a friend and pretty soon I got hooked up with some really good people.”

“The Owyhees are beautiful country, but it was really hot the first two weeks,” Parker said. “It’s the most desolate part of the state I’ve ever been in. You don’t see any people and the elk you see are tough to get to.”

Parker hooked up with a rancher during the third week of the area’s month-long season.

Hunting on foot one day, they spotted a big bull on a distant ridge. By the time they got to that ridge, the bull was heading over another ridge.

“I knew that was my only chance at that bull,” Parker said, recalling that he took a steady rest and filled his first tag by dropping the six-pointer at 570 yards.

One down, three to go.

“I have a family, so I went back and forth on the hunts as much as I could, trying to keep all the balls rolling,” he said, noting that Idaho Fish Game officials have jokingly nicknamed the “Super Slam Pak” as the “divorce tag.”

“Luckily, we have a good crew at work and they gave me the time I needed. Most of them are hunters and they kind of understood.”

Even during his short retreats back to work, he couldn’t totally withdraw from the hunt.

“The news that I got the tag was in the paper and pretty soon all sorts of people were calling and giving me suggestions on where to hunt and tips on sightings,” he said. “I think because there was such a small window of opportunity, they wanted to see me be successful. I was averaging five to 10 calls a week from people offering advice.”

A big tip came from Idaho Fish and Game managers, who called Parker to say they had spotted a monster mule deer outside of Fairfield, Idaho. They said they’d show him where they’d seen it if a department production crew could join him to film the hunt in order to promote the state’s new private lands access program.

“Dad and I had been up scouting for moose near Priest Lake,” Parker said. “We got the tip and flew down to southern Idaho the very next morning.”

“We saw 50 to 250 mule deer a day in that unit,” Doug Parker said.

“Tons of mule deer,” Jim confirmed. “But we never saw the really big one, so I came back home.”

Parker tended to work and family for another week before heading back to Owyhee County to hunt antelope.

“We were into the third week of October and it was cooler and more pleasant down there,” he said. “I’d got to know the area a little and I liked it. We hunted five days before I took a buck. He’s by no means a trophy.”

“A dink buck,” Doug Parker elaborated.

“But I enjoyed the hunt and just being in that country,” Jim said.

Two down, two to go.

At the end of October, Parker was hunting moose again in the home-ground of the Idaho Panhandle.

“The biggest moose in the state are right here in our backyard,” he said, noting that he got serious about getting a moose in the first week of November and was hunting every day.

In one day, he and his dad spotted 32 moose between Priest River and Priest Lake.

“It was unbelievable,” he said. “Moose don’t come in herds. It’s onesies, twosies or three at a time. To see so many of these solitary creatures in one day was a real eye opener to how many moose we have in this area.”

On the seventh straight day, the Parkers and a friend spotted a big bull at 9 a.m. “down in a big hole,” Parker said, hinting that he had enough sense not to try to shoot the 800-pound brute down there.

“We waited and waited for him to come out, but he didn’t. We knew we had to go mule deer hunting in a couple of days, so about 2 p.m. we decided to make something happen.”

The three men went into “the hole” in a loosely organized drive “through thick, nasty brush,” Parker said. “The bull happened to go up and out just like he was supposed to, and I shot him — 700 yards, and he went down on the ridge. It was perfect.”

The next day, Parker recruited a friend to hike down the ridge with a pack string of mules and haul out the meat and the bull’s trophy 49-inch rack.

Three down, one to go.

“I shot the bull on Nov. 7,” he recalled. “We packed it out on Nov. 8 and I head down south for the mule deer hunt that was going to open Nov. 10 in Unit 45.”

He hunted and hunted before finding a mule deer buck worthy of filling a super tag.

“Dad had been hunting with me 90 percent of the time,” Parker said. “It was really neat to spend that much time together, but mostly it was good to have him helping. We spent a lot of time looking through binoculars and two sets of eyes are always better than one.”

He filled his fourth tag on Nov. 19.

“I’d been hunting seven straight days on moose and 12 straight days for mule deer,” he said. “I kept telling myself, ‘I’ll never do this again’… ‘Be patient’… ‘You won’t remember the 19 straight days of hard work 10 years from now, but you’ll remember the mule deer.’

“Once the buck was down, I was ready to come home.”

The mule deer antlers measured nearly 30 inches across, although the taxidermist will have to do a little work to repair them.

“Dad broke off the biggest tine as he drove it out on the ATV,” Parker said.

“We celebrated that night by going to watch Coeur d’Alene High School in the state championship football game, which just happened to be in Pocatello.”

Thinking back on it all, the Idaho hunting season of a lifetime was remarkably incident-free, he said.

“We talked to the Colorado hunter who got the other “Super Slam Pak” and he wasn’t doing quite as well; pressured more by time and distance, I think,” Doug Parker said.

“I don’t think I’d do anything differently if I had it to do over,” Jim said.

“Going into this, I knew this would be a huge undertaking even though I’ve hunted all my life in Idaho, and it was twice as much of a commitment as I’d envisioned, even with all the help I got.”

Aside from all the advice, he counted 22 people who directly helped him in the field.

Parker said he had no idea how much impact the “super slam” had on his wallet.

But the Parker Toyota business manager, who shares an office with Parker, pushed his chair away from his desk, eased into a bean-counter’s uneasy smile and said, “I can tell you how much it cost him.”

Parker has shared nearly a half a ton of game meat with his employees and delivered his autumn trophies to the taxidermist so he’ll have tangible memories of a hunting season he may never duplicate.

Or will he?

“I don’t know, I’ll probably put in for the lottery again,” he confided. “But my wife might skin my hide if I get it.”