2014 Wyoming hunt

[JDH]

I know this is a little late but between starting a new job right before the hunt to moving a month later to the 4 hours on the road everyday in between my time was limited. Couple that with reading how well some of these hunt stories are put together on here I was hoping to be able to take a few hours and sit and do a complete write up but I don't think that will happen so I will piece meal it. Deer season was also in that time frame. Using the advice from this site as well as months of planning 3 of us headed to Wyoming for our first Western hunt - pronghorn. The goal was to take my wife's uncle on a hunt he has wanted to complete since he was a kid.

 

[LCH]

Looks like a good start!

Good to see a fellow Hoosier getting out there..

 

[TheShootist.41]

Looking forward to the rest of the story.

 

[JDH]

Part of the prep included making a cow decoy which we named Bessie. Well the day we got out there I realized "Bessie" was a steer. My best invention was using a folding chair as a toilet. Saw a few Mizzou fans on our way out there. My wife's uncle had a heck of a time finding ammo that shot good out of his Mossberg 30-06 so we had to stop at Bass Pro on the way to pick him up an extra box of shells. We kept to our plan which was to leave Saturday morning, get there Sunday and scout for Monday and Tuesday and be ready for opening day on Wednesday. Saw our first pronghorn in Nebraska which was cool except that it got us way too excited when we still had about 4 hours of driving. I had spent hours on Google Earth looking for camping spots so it was nice to get my #1 spot. It was off the road a little away from the dust.

 

[gutshootem]

What happened to the rest of the story??

 

[Canoe Country]

And????

 

[JDH]

Sorry. Got busy. We spent the first two days scouting and saw plenty of animals. Just like everyone said it would the GPS card saved us. It was awesome to be able to just drive and be able to call out exactly what was public and what was private. We didn't even make it to the western side of our unit because we felt pretty good about what we saw. I was able to get 30-40 yards from one young buck and we could get a few of them to actually come towards us.

 

[Trigger50]

and ???? !!!!

 

[JDH]

Well on the night before the opener we saw the biggest buck we had seen in our unit right before dark. We put a plan together and then I received a surprise. Since I had planned the trip and did the driving and the navigating once we were in our unit,my trip mates wanted me to shoot first in the morning. I was reluctant because the main point of the trip was for my wife's uncle to complete his dream hunt and put a pronghorn on the ground. I relented and agreed. I justified it by thinking that it would be good for me to get me buck down and then I could focus on guiding. Well we got up on opening morning and drove to where we saw the buck the night before. We got there 5 minutes after shooting light and saw a buck run across the road right where we saw the big buck the night before. We waited for it to get over a hill then we jumped out and I slowly walked over the hill until it got into view. I hurriedly set up and took a shot. The buck went down. Well when we got up to it, it had massive ground shrinkage. Well. it was more like it wasn't the big buck we saw the night before. But we were on our way to completing the goal of the trip - getting a buck for everyone regardless of size.

 

[JDH]

Field pics of my buck

 

[Topgun 30-06]

Nice buck!

 

[JohnCushman]

Nice!!

 

[Canoe Country]

still a solid antelope, how about the rest of the group?

 

[MT_elk]

Congrats!

 

[JDH]

Thanks guys. My buck was broken at the tips but had some kickers on the base that made up for it. Just a couple hours after my buck we got on another and went through the routine, slow down, yep its a shooter, park behind a hill, get out and start our sneak. Since I had the GPS with the boundaries I was in the lead. We sneaked around a small hill and Holy Crap! the buck was right there looking at me maybe 150 yards away. I ducked but before I got out of sight I noticed the buck was coming towards us. I motioned for the other two to get back down the hill and we moved as quickly as we could away from the buck. We moved back 70-80 yards and set up just seconds before the buck popped over the hill. He didn't wait long but as soon as he turned to run CRACK. My wife's cousin's 30-06 rang out and down the buck went. He hit a little high and had to finish it. Both rifles we had were shooting high. We think that was due to the elevation change which was around 4500' difference I think-my rifle was cased the whole time so that's all we can think of. We saw a few more bucks but none of them met my wife's uncle's standards. I think he just wanted to make the hunt last a little longer. That was our opening day. I forgot to mention that we had a buck 60 yards from camp the day before opening day. We posed for the game warden who was probably nicer than any officer I have met in Indiana. The locals had us convinced that pronghorn was going to taste like mud so I had to fix some up for dinner just to see for myself. I'm not sure what they did with their goats but ours was delicious.

 

[Art Vandeley]

Great pictures, looks like a fun hunt.

 

[JDH]

We all had a buck tag and a doe tag each. We had a guy flying in on Thursday to spend a couple days with us. This information is important because of two reasons - we wanted to get our bucks (3) before we shot any does and we thought it would be great to tag out before our fourth guy got there. The next day consisted of us driving around spotting goats and then deciding that they either weren't shooters or just not what my wife's uncle was looking for. He got awfully picky for someone who's dream was just to "shoot a decent buck". LOL Right before lunch we drove down a BLM lane a couple hundred yards and glassed and turned around and was about to pull out onto the county road when my wife's uncle saw a buck. I told him it was a shooter and he agreed. We did the routine again but instead of the hill we used a wash to stay hidden. Once again the buck came towards where he thought we were and that put him less than 100 yards away to our left and not where we expected. We were looking for him when he hightailed it and ran back across in front of us to the right. It was a picture perfect stalk with a picture perfect shot. At that point I felt a tremendous relief knowing that we had accomplished our main goal of getting him a buck. It was icing on the cake knowing that he spotted it first, we put a classic stalk on it, and it did the classic pronghorn fall over backwards. It seemed that afternoon all the goats realized that it was open season and they became scarce. We didn't get anything else the rest of the day or anything else the next day. There was a couple of missed shots. I put our 4th guy on a buck and when we crested the hill where it was there was a pickup on a road that crossed private land before turning back into public glassing the same buck. We all 3 kinda had a standoff for around 15-20 minutes before the pickup drove off and spooked the buck. Another time we walked up a draw and the animals had just flat disappeared. Well that actually happened a few times. It was amazing how they could just disappear like that given the lack of cover. We got one doe that afternoon. Our 4th guy ended up with a small buck the next day and we all tagged out. Season opened on Wednesday and we tagged out on Saturday. We used my steer decoy on my doe and another doe. That stalk made a believer out of them when we were able to get less than 100 yards from 4 does.

 

[Trigger50]

Congrats !

 

[JDH]

I really wish I had it on video when we actually had to run away from the pronghorn to get a shot. That moment was one of the strangest moments that has happened to me while hunting. I'm laughing just thinking about it.

 

[1_pointer]

Well done! I just love chasing pronghorns!