Ready, aim: Season begins for local bowhunters

The weather is getting cooler, the nights are getting longer and this can only mean one thing: Hunting season has arrived.

Archer Jerrod Lyle, the manager at Trophy Taker, has been waiting for the season to begin and has already been scouting the terrain for this season’s epic hunt, a two-week mountain goat hunt just north of Yellowstone National Park. Each year he applies for 35 tags and this year he was one of the fortunate few to get a mountain goat tag.

“To me it’s about preparation, you just try and put the odds in your favor,” Lyle said. He considers several factors when he starts planning a hunt. Wind direction, mechanical errors, injuries and unforeseen circumstances all can affect the outcome.

Lyle said that he has spent many hours arranging gear, reading books about mountain goat hunting, watching footage of mountain goats and mapping the unit where he’ll be camping. In addition to this, he has already logged in three trips to scout the area and place his gear. Lyle has also been training on his mountain bike and doing strength training exercises to condition his body for the rough days that lie ahead. He said that he’s even lost 15 pounds because of it.

“If I come back [from the hunt], and know that I’ve left everything on the table, then I’ll be OK with that no matter what the outcome is,” Lyle said, explaining that hunters aren’t guaranteed the opportunity to harvest an animal, no matter how much gear or experience they have.

Simple facts are a testament of this. On any given day Lyle said that there are about 60 mountain goats that will be passing through his expansive hunting unit. And, to add another technical twist to the equation, Lyle will be the only hunter out of a group 12 in the location that will be using a bow. The others will be armed with rifles, whose range far exceeds Lyle’s own 50-yard shooting range.

In spite of the odds, Lyle said he wouldn’t have it any other way. Growing up in Salmon, Idaho, he remembers learning to first shoot a bow when he was very young. His father, Don Lyle, helped him grow and progress as a hunter. Lyle said that his father had a lot of patience with him and would allow him to ruin quite a few hunts as he mastered bow hunting’s steep learning curve.

Now, far from his hometown of Salmon and with a family of his own, he said that one of his favorite parts about hunting is the time it gives him with his two boys and his wife Ruthie, whose also an avid hunter. And then there’s the many hunting stories he’s gathered over the years, like when he shot his first elk at age 16 and ended up getting lost in the snow. Fatigued from hauling the elk, Lyle said he remembers stopping and resting against the sides of trees, unknowingly falling asleep, only to be awakened by the layers of falling snow that gathered on his shoulders.

“My dad was experienced enough at hunting to wait for me and not call the Search and Rescue,” Lyle said, adding that he finally found his dad after 11 hours of hiking and hauling.

Sleeping in the snow wasn’t Lyle’s only adventure. Two weekends ago, Lyle was staying 9,000 feet up in the Cabinet Mountains when he was charged by a grizzly bear. Lyle and a friend had been hunting for elk and making elk calls when they heard the bushes rustling just beyond them. Lyle said he heard his friend yell “grizzly” as loud as he could. Lyle turned to see a giant grizzly bear in full charge.

“To be fair, once the bear saw that we weren’t elk it stopped,” Lyle said. The bear was only 10 yards away when it slowed to a halt. “It was definitely an adrenaline rush,” Lyle added.

These types of adventures are a part of the why he loves to hunt so much.

“It reveals something about character. It’s made me a tougher person internally,” he explained.

Hunting also offers him a connection to nature and the outdoors.

“Hunting is wild,” he said. “It’s raw and it happens in some of the most beautiful places in the world. It teaches you to learn things that you didn’t think you could do. The benefits you get whether you have a harvest or not are just unbelievable to me.”