A measurement of the (predominantly) vibration‐vibration (V‐V) decay rate of thev= 3 level in HF gas yields a value of 1.6×106sec−1Torr−1. The technique utilized was to optically pump the HF sample with the output of a pulsed HF laser oscillating simultaneously on a line in both thev= 2 → 1 andv= 1 → 0 bands. An analytic description of the time behavior of thev= 1,v= 2, andv= 3 levels using a treatment based on simplified rate equations is described.