A day to remember

[Addicting]

As many of you know I had my hunting partner bail on a planned hunt earlier this year. So plans were adjusted every one was just going to have to do their own thing.

I rearranged dates to maximize opportunity and minimize my son’s absence from school.

I picked him up Wednesday and we headed to Wyoming. The goal was to be home Sunday with enough time to process meat. Then rest before the school buss arrived zero dark thirty Monday morning.

 

[Addicting]

With our day and half drive almost over we hit the southern end of the unit at last light. As the road dropped down into a canyon of sorts we saw our first antelope. They were several hundred feet above us skylined on the edge of the rim.

Under my breath I said a few choice words to myself. I was going to have to climb that with a 9 year old. I look over and he is fast asleep. It can wait till tomorrow and we head to the hotel.

 

[Addicting]

I called a buddy who is more familiar with scoring antelope. His advice was three tiered.

1. Prongs need to start above the ear.

2. Needs to be obvious mass once you first look at him.

3. Needs good length prongs.

Tomorrow take pics and call him if there is any questions. Off to sleep we went with a bit of dread about that canyon looking country.

 

[Addicting]

Teaser till tomorrow…

 

[Falcon75]

Teaser till tomorrow…
View attachment 293696

I am guessing 83 with the way the hoof curves

 

[Addicting]

2 tags and two days to work with on filling them. Day one we scouted and sorted bucks. Didn’t really find anything significant in the open flat country. Just a dink buck here and there all by themselves. Darn it, back to that canyon type country where we saw some yesterday evening.

Did I mention, I am driving a grocery getter with a whopping 6” of ground clearance on old two tracks with no cell service.

 

[Addicting]

Find a road on the map that has a name and decide if it’s named it may be passable. It cuts thru the heart of the country I was hoping to avoid. For the first 15 miles it’s almost a maintained road. We start noticing the more topography equals more antelope we are seeing. Taking any close up pics of any of them is almost impossible. They are chasing each other up and around draws. There was more than one occasion where they were farther away from us vertically than horizontally.

We end up finding a nice wide buck heavy buck but he doesn’t have much prong. I mark the map and move on. Several roads of shoot on the map. The last time they were traveled was in a covered wagon by the amount of sagebrush grown up concealing it. Too sketchy to even attempt so on we drive. We are 20-25 miles in when the road turns into a clay path with occasional oil pan ripping rocks.

We see more and more antelope. We find big Hank pushing 20-25 does and fawns. I instantly stop and start to get the gun ready only to realize utter dismay.

 

[NEWHunter]

And . . .

 

[Dave N]

We interrupt this story to allow for a breakfast break!

 

[Addicting]

I see that I left my tags back at the hotel. I am caught in a battle of morals. There is no one around for 20 miles and this gorgeous buck is on a sliver of public. My boy is like a chipmunk who just keg stood directly from the slushy machine. He is so amped up for me to shoot him, Rowdy Roddy Piper couldn’t have pinned him.

 

[Addicting]

We interrupt this story to allow for a breakfast break!

I just woke up, a 2 day drive and meat care had me busy last night. Let me get some coffee and I’ll see if I can finish this.

 

[Addicting]

As tough as it was I had to tell Mater that we had forgotten the tags and we would just have to take pics. I started getting the spotter and camera set up. I looked up and the whole herd had disappeared. There is only one way out of this draw so they must of dropped down inside a cut. We waited and waited and nothing. Houdini himself couldn’t have pulled off a better escape. We moved to the top of the draw only to see him 3/4 mile away headed for Montana passing a bullet train.

 

[Addicting]

With a rumble in our bellies and no tags it’s time to head back to town for lunch. Not a bad morning, we had probably looked at 40-50 bucks. 2 gave us a reason to get the spotter out and they were both within a mile of each other. We had a place to work with for the afternoon.

Looking at the map we are still on the named goat trail and it appears to loop back to the main road. Off we go seeing a few more sporadic bucks but mainly trying not to rip off any critical car parts on the way.

 

[Addicting]

It takes almost 2 hours to get back to the hotel and eat some lunch. The second tag we have is a donated -7 type doe tag. It’s for a small area 98% private. The biologists advice was to just knock on doors.

With the heat waves in full effect we opted to drive and see what we were up against. True to his word there were only a handful of antelope on the pivots. Nothing on the 2% of public.

Mater and I found a rancher doing repairs on some equipment and introduced ourselves. He was very nice and stopped what he was doing to chat. He talked with us for about 20 min and then sent us to his neighbors as he didn’t have any does on his land.

The neighbor had 4 large pivots and no glassable antelope. But born with the gift of gab down the long drive we went. This actually turned out to be the most harrowing drive of the whole trip. Mud holes big enough to hide Jimmy Hoffa in and enough turning to give a rattle snake a back ache.

 

[Caseknife]

Waiting patiently.............

 

[Addicting]

Waiting patiently.............

Sorry, someone was wrong on the internet and my inner Kevin crept out. I gotta wrestle him back in his cage.

 

[Addicting]

At the end of the drive we found a very nice rancher. She took a liking to us and we had a good visit. She welcomed us to see what we could turn up and told us there is normally a few. They may be over by the barn.

By the barn they were, tucked into the old equipment like rabbits. We actually had to walk around it all and shew them out. They acted more like lawn pets than the wild antelope we had just left a few hours prior. One just laid there and could have cared less till we got to 20 feet and then with disgust she got up and slowly walked to the alfalfa.

A very guilty feeling of this ain’t right quickly went away when I looked at Mater. He was about ready to charge them and drop a bionic elbow if I didn’t hurry up and shoot one.

 

[Addicting]

With a slam dunk in the bag at 40 yards I decided I would just shoot her in the head to get as much freezer meat as possible.

Unbeknown to me, I had not dialed my scope back to zero after a long range session prior to leaving for the hunt.

After sending 2 air balls gracefully a foot over her head she decided it was time to run.

Upon a few choice words a rodeo ensued on checking equipment and getting set back up.

Now at 300 the antelope are still puzzled at why somebody is so loud during mid day nap time. I find my mistake and send a 3rd round and hear the impact. There is a basketball size plume of hair floating in the air and it’s over.

 

[Addicting]

The ranch owner asked we take the whole animal off property. So a quick 400 yard drag thru 2 foot tall mosquito infested alfalfa put us on the board. Now after some more gab and thanks we headed to find a place to process her.

 

[Addicting]

It’s pushing 5 by the time we are wrapped up with the doe. We have a hour drive back to where we were that morning for the buck tag. Mater is tired and wants to call it. I insist on using the daylight we have to check out more area and tell him he can rest in the car. We are just going to drive the roads on the east end. The highway seems to split antelope country from elk country. We find the same type of sporadic dink buck over and over. We are not seeing any does.