By Tim Hunt, Saratoga Springs, Utah
I was born and raised in Utah, and with my last name being Hunt, naturally I am a hunter. I started hunting back in the mid ’60s with my dad, brothers, uncles and cousins. It was tradition. My dad was a schoolteacher raising 10 kids. We didn’t have much money for our hunt camp excursions—we took our station wagon and a beat-up old tent—but I developed a love for hunting. I am not a wealthy man and could not afford to go out of state on big expensive hunts, so if I was going to get in on a really good hunt it would depend on the luck of the draw.
Starting in the ’70s I began applying for everything I could. I remember when the draw would be held at the DWR office or the state fairgrounds—I sat and listen to the names being read for hours. It was never me. Finally, in 1995, I drew a tag! A once-in-a-lifetime tag—a bull moose! I was more excited than a 5-year-old on Christmas morning. The hunt was on a CWMU, and I told the landowner I was going to hunt archery. He allowed me to hunt the earlier season and I was able to harvest a nice bull.
The 1996 draw came, and lo and behold I drew another once-in-a-lifetime hunt for mountain goat! October 17, 1996, was my 40th birthday. At 4 a.m. I started hiking up the face of Mount Timpanogas to see if I could whack one of the seven billies I had been watching all summer. A little after noon, I finally had the biggest one at 40 yards. I raised my bow and took aim only to see that somewhere on my hike my sights had busted off! I shot from instinct and hit him a little low, but it did the job. The problem was that he started to roll down the mountain, then off a cliff. The fall broke 2½ inches off his left horn. The right horn was 10⅛ inches. Fish and Game said it was the first 10-inch goat taken in Utah.
In 1997, after thinking I would never, or should never, draw another tag, I drew a bison tag! On a freezing December day on the Henry Mountains, I was with my five best friends (my brothers) and was able to take a huge bull at 450 yards with my 7mm. I had tried with a bow, but those bison just wouldn’t cooperate.
In 1998, the luck struck for the fourth year in a row. Between death threats and offers to take me to Las Vegas from friends and strangers, I drew a Paunsaugunt premium limited-entry deer tag. That year I was enrolled in the dedicated hunter program, which meant at that time, I could hunt all three seasons. On the last day of the rifle hunt, I was alone, and up jumped a huge buck. He ran through the trees, I could see a small opening ahead of him, he cleared the trees, I saw antlers and shot. The buck rolled. I got to it and found a 22-inch 5x5. I had shot the wrong deer. I tried CPR on it, but the deer was dead. I tagged him and my hunt was over.
More than 20 years went by, and though I continued to apply for hunts, I drew nothing. Then, in 2021, I drew a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep tag. My sons and I headed for the Newfoundland Mountains out west of the Great Salt Lake on the first Monday of the hunt. I was planning to stay a week, but by noon that day I had already passed on four legal rams, and then at about 4 p.m. we found a nice one. I got to within 300 yards, and since two of my sons needed to leave that night, I decided to whack him.
I don’t know of anyone else who has drawn four out of the five once-in-a-lifetime hunts in Utah. I consider myself very lucky. It is unlikely that it will happen to anyone else now that Utah is on the point system—most of my earlier draws were with different regulations than we have now. Will I ever get a desert bighorn tag, which is the only once-in-a-lifetime hunt that I haven’t drawn? Probably not. I won’t complain. But maybe there is a chance, because you never know what will happen with the luck of the draw.
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