"The One" is in the cooler.
I left the motel before dawn this morning and took the dirt hiway, then two-track back to alllllmost where I tagged the buck on my On X Hunt map. About a 1/2 mile from where I last saw him there was a high knoll in the road, so I stopped well short of that and pulled off to the side of the skid mark of a road (Just in case some other fool decided to trek that way).
I tossed the Alice pack on and walked a few hundreds yards just cresting the knoll, dropped down a little to not be sky-lined and just took a seat to watch another Western sunrise.
It wasn't but a few minutes before the sun broke over the Black Hills, to my right, and pretty much shut out any chance I had at seeing anything in the direction. Wind was pretty in my face and surprizingly mild, maybe 8-10.
It wasn't long before I made out a couple of Lope wayyyy out there. Too far to worry about.
Ya know what? It gets pretty freakin' chilly out here in the morning and I was drawing the hood just a bit in tighter when I caught a flicker of a flash of color out of the corner on my right eye. If you've been in the field for more than couple days, you know what that flash of color means. I threw to bino's up a saw SUN ! They were useless. If I used my hand to shield the glare and squinted, I could just make out a small group (5-6) working in my direction.
That was a long 30 minutes.Yeah, they kept coming closer, but that did me a ton of good looking into more Sun than Lope.
They were still a good 800+ out from me, when I pulled out my phone to check the On X. This isn't a big BLM tract and I wanted to be sure everything was still legit. Ok, still good. Switched the layer over to Topo. That gave me a better idea of lay of the antelopes travel path. I still couldn't see well, and I didn't even know if there was a buck in the group. But, if I dropped back over the knoll and made my way across the back side I thought I'd be able to circle in behind them by, provided they kept moving. at their pace, and the sun would be at my back then.
I tossed my crap into the pack and lo-balled it back off. When I got around to where I thought I should be, I found a low run of ground I could scoot along by just ducking over at the waist.When it ran out I shucked the pack, pulled out the bino's and knee crawled up the last few yards.
Who sez you have to take a 400 yd shot on a Lope? There they were, maybe, MAYBE 75 yds and clueless as a new recruit the 1st minute at Marine Corps boot camp, and all 6 of them showing me their posterior. I didn't need any optics at this point.
And then I learned yet another lesson on Antelope hunting. They will drive you crazy, by not raising their heads, when feeding. I swear, all 6 of them were doing it on purpose... just to piss me off !
After about 3 1/2 weeks brain-time of inwardly cussing at them, the far left one looked up.
MR."The One" !!!!
Oh no, after all these years this can't be this easy. I rolled the back pack around as slowly as I could and bunched it up for a rest. And Thank God I learned a long time ago to never, ever, ever have your scope cranked up to 10X. Set at 3.5. He was quartering facing away to the right. Put the crosshair right behind the back rib and let my MC training follow through.
He flinched forward a little and I caught a ripple of hide before the recoil took my sight picture off target. AND THEN HE JUST STOOD THERE!!! The girls? They took off hell bent for anywhere but here, kicking up dust, he just stood there.
I didn't even think to chamber another round because I was so dumbfounded. He's hit... Hard. Now drop dammit !
Step, wobble, step, step, wobble, kinda step, flop...................
Now here's the pisser of all injustice..........I lost my D@mn Phone crawling around. WTF !!!
NO PIC"S. Really??????
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