I got a late start this morning as I was waiting out the reds/oranges on the radar screen. Driving towards the ranch I only fishtailed once on a slick spot. Good ol drivers ed kicked in and it straightened out fast. Driving past the entrance to the ranch house I saw up ahead a truck/water trailer off in the ditch. The patriarch was stuck it seemed, so I u-turned to go back to see if I could help.
He had already walked back to the house, jumped into a different rig, and was on to the next chore. He thanked me for my willingness to help, but said he would take care of the truck later.
Crawling along and glassing every once and awhile, I decided to not expend lots of time trying to find the antelope I had pursued yesterday and explore other WIHA in the surrounding areas.
OnX and KWDP signage don’t always agree. Sometimes the map system shows land enrolled in the program, and other times land with signage on the periphery doesn’t show on the app.
Moving slowly in my best ever road hunting mode, I came to a corner of a WIHA and stopped to glass. Tall weeds way down the fence line danced their gentle dance in the somewhat gusty wind, and then one of those weed heads grew horns and stepped more into the open.
Buck!
I was in business. Like yesterday I found that the road dropped down towards a dry bottomland so that I could park out of sight/sound. Before I drove off I counted the number of electric line poles from the road to the weed patch and the buck. 11 telephone poles to get to where he was nervously glancing my way.
This ground was terraced, so I suppose at one time it was in ag production (corn and sorghum were in several nearby fields). At the northwest corner of the WIHA (buck was close to SE corner) I parked and pulled the backpack on and crawled under the antelope friendly fencing with ease.
Keeping my path so that I could only see the far off telephone pole tops, I moved so that I could be as far south into the WIHA as the buck was when I saw him. Crawling up to the lip of a terrace I glassed over to where he was the last time I saw him, only to find only weed heads waving.
Glassing further surrounding areas yielded no pronghorn.
I decided to stay put, hoping that continued glassing might find the buck. I stayed out for while until the wind died down, got swirly and then flipped nearly 180°.
Done with this spot I went back to get my pack I had left when I made a small crawl to gain visual altitude. Looking down I saw rotten old straps, and a ratcheting tie down, so I picked it up and eventually hung it on a roadside WIHA sign.
Back in the Highlander, I made plans to get eyes on the far western WIHA as shown by OnX. Once again most were correct, but sometimes the signs on the property didn’t exactly match what OnX was showing.
As I was getting closer to Colorado, I found that I couldn’t get to a couple of the WIHA’s from Any direction. No roads adjacent to some of the OnX listed lands.
I eventually did make it to Colorado, and my exit out of the area in those post sundown moments was driving done the road marked as CR rd 39 (state line).
Weather radar forecasts shows long periods of rain downpours before sunrise and continuing most of the morning. Getting this rain (multiple inches),on top of last weeks multiple inches plus today’s rain probably mean even more careful driving will be required.
He had already walked back to the house, jumped into a different rig, and was on to the next chore. He thanked me for my willingness to help, but said he would take care of the truck later.
Crawling along and glassing every once and awhile, I decided to not expend lots of time trying to find the antelope I had pursued yesterday and explore other WIHA in the surrounding areas.
OnX and KWDP signage don’t always agree. Sometimes the map system shows land enrolled in the program, and other times land with signage on the periphery doesn’t show on the app.
Moving slowly in my best ever road hunting mode, I came to a corner of a WIHA and stopped to glass. Tall weeds way down the fence line danced their gentle dance in the somewhat gusty wind, and then one of those weed heads grew horns and stepped more into the open.
Buck!
I was in business. Like yesterday I found that the road dropped down towards a dry bottomland so that I could park out of sight/sound. Before I drove off I counted the number of electric line poles from the road to the weed patch and the buck. 11 telephone poles to get to where he was nervously glancing my way.
This ground was terraced, so I suppose at one time it was in ag production (corn and sorghum were in several nearby fields). At the northwest corner of the WIHA (buck was close to SE corner) I parked and pulled the backpack on and crawled under the antelope friendly fencing with ease.
Keeping my path so that I could only see the far off telephone pole tops, I moved so that I could be as far south into the WIHA as the buck was when I saw him. Crawling up to the lip of a terrace I glassed over to where he was the last time I saw him, only to find only weed heads waving.
Glassing further surrounding areas yielded no pronghorn.
I decided to stay put, hoping that continued glassing might find the buck. I stayed out for while until the wind died down, got swirly and then flipped nearly 180°.
Done with this spot I went back to get my pack I had left when I made a small crawl to gain visual altitude. Looking down I saw rotten old straps, and a ratcheting tie down, so I picked it up and eventually hung it on a roadside WIHA sign.
Back in the Highlander, I made plans to get eyes on the far western WIHA as shown by OnX. Once again most were correct, but sometimes the signs on the property didn’t exactly match what OnX was showing.
As I was getting closer to Colorado, I found that I couldn’t get to a couple of the WIHA’s from Any direction. No roads adjacent to some of the OnX listed lands.
I eventually did make it to Colorado, and my exit out of the area in those post sundown moments was driving done the road marked as CR rd 39 (state line).
Weather radar forecasts shows long periods of rain downpours before sunrise and continuing most of the morning. Getting this rain (multiple inches),on top of last weeks multiple inches plus today’s rain probably mean even more careful driving will be required.
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