Kansas 2026 Pronghorn

[kansasdad]

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.

 

[kansasdad]

You are welcome HuntTalkers….


Ventusky app for temp, precip and localized wind direction.

 

[kansasdad]

Today is going to be a wet one, but I don’t care as I’m four for four on plugging blindly into USB plugs!

All-time personal best is six, so I hope to best that in the coming days.

 

[kansasdad]

I have found 8 on WIHA.

One decent buck plus a really nice Kansas buck. Not bad for other environs either as they appeared in my rain dropped windows.

It almost seemed like they had taken shelter under the eaves of a cell tower utility shed.

This pastureland is flatter than flat, but hasn’t been grazed so there is short cover.

I turned the suv so I could slip out unseen and assemble my crawling attire: rain pants over the pants, a purple merino sweater over a teeshirt with a camo shirt over that. The merino sweater is from Nordstroms….it pays to go shopping with @mrskansasdad. Quality knee pads and thicker gloves than the temps call for and off I go.

I’ve crawled in enough to be legally far enough away from the buildings to discharge a firearm.

I am now watching them trading bedding places from 250ish yards away.

 

[kansasdad]

It does seem odd to glass the group and sometimes count 5, 6 7, or all eight. Wind gusts moving grass around to hide or expose.

They are all facing in my general direction.

When/if I move it’s gonna be like a ninja snake

 

[kansasdad]

The low clouds streaming southward (isn’t the hurricane coming from the southwest?) would occasionally release a fine mist and then a moment later hurl only chilly wind. On a quiet day the sound of meadowlarks would be heard quite regularly. Today the only sounds I heard was gusty wet winds.

The smaller buck left the herd for parts unknown, but I got to watch the buck, four does and four fawns for the rest of the day. By emulating a ninja snake I got to approximately 240 yards (the range finder almost never could get a fix on a pronghorn due to the whipping grasses and my need to stay low.

I first saw this herd next to a cell tower. They would pick up and move 100+ yards deeper into the field, bed and feed, drift back, work on the weeds next to the tower, then make it to the road, mill around, make like they were going to leave the property into the milo, and then make another circuit.

With most every circuit I hoped that they would drift a little west, towards me. And when it seemed most everyone in the herd was head down, or horsing around with each other I’d push a little closer east towards them. I finally hit a little crest in the field that had been giving a bit of added screening of my BOFD (big ol fat dude) frame. Moving down the little slope was not likely to work as they were slightly above me looking down and I decided to play the long game.

Meaning I was going to watch them bed, and go again at them tomorrow.

 

[kansasdad]

As I got back to the car, I dumped the wet outer clothes and started the car. I had turned my headlights off so as to not shine a light at last light towards the herd.

I was recharging my phone when I looked up and saw headlights coming down the road. The antelope stood up as the truck passed by, and then I had to deal with a pissed off land owner.

“What are you doing here”.
“I was on the WIHA as I have an antelope tag”
“Why did you nearly park in my front yard? We’ve got a lot of things disappearing from around here”
What followed was a long rant of people tearing down fences chasing coyote dogs, camping (not allowed on WIHA), leaving trash everywhere, etc etc. With each offense I replied “I’m so sorry about that”.
He also shared that there is a real problem with drugs and trafficking drugs in this area.
I told him I had a business card so that he could know who I was and that I was on the up and up, but by then I think he realized I had a legit reason for being there.

I told him that my plan was to return Thursday and hunt here again. He gruffly wished me good luck.

And then he asked if I knew what the limit was on antelope. Before I could reply, he told me that the answer is 10…a day.

I told him that another rancher north of town had asked me to “shoot four and take one” which made this once pissed off farmer LOL.

 

[kansasdad]

After thinking about my encounter with the adjacent land owner, it seems that it’s better than a coin toss that he had a handgun in hand or close by as he pulled up. (I have a friend who gave some background on his general disposition).

 

[treydfoster]

With an estimated herd of less than 75, the Flint Hills pronghorn are not in the hunting zones.

Fawn mortality rates are normally over 75%, mostly attributed to coyotes.

I saw a very nice buck in the very eastern portion of the Flint Hills west of Emporia. I'm from Missouri and I measured him at 140 miles from my house. I imagine there was not a wild Pronghorn in the world further east than him at that point.

 

[kansasdad]

Today was eventful.
Flood watches everywhere.
I slept in and even got to watch the showcase showdown on the Price is Right.

The weather radar for the WIHA I had designs on showed constant moderate rainfall all morning and into the afternoon.

I finally got out of town at the stroke of noon. I saw something that few that frequent western Kansas have ever seen… water flowing in the Arkansas (and we say it “R-Kansas”)



This wheat field could double as a fish rearing scheme today

I finally set the cruise control at 32 mph to force myself to not drive too fast on the soupy roads. Arriving at the WIHA I was supremely pleased to find a buck 50 yards off the road, and an assortment of other antelope behind him, I was just trying to stay out of the ditch at the moment so I can’t say with an certainty how many others there were.

I drove to the other end of the WIHA looking for a safe place to pull over and not find myself stuck, and at
the same time allow clearance for cars/semis to get past.

I sat in the car for over two hours waiting for the pelting rain and gusty winds moderate. This did allow me to modify a project I started several years ago. I had “breathable” waders that were rendered unusable when the boot rubber cracked. I had cut off the bottom half of the boot thinking that these would make excellent bib overall style rain gear. I ended up having to trim off a little more of the remaining boot rubber, and cut a slit down the tongue area and it fit over my boots like a champ.

I was on the south east side of the wiha, the antelope today and yesterday had been on then on the north side and my plan was to advance up the slope of the land to find where these antelope were possibly still bedded, and out a
Ninja move on them. Finding a meandering game trail that was taking me along the direction that I wanted to go made exa cray what direction should I be walking.

The contour lines on this property are very widely spaced. There isn’t much of a crest of the hill, but more like the slope decreases to zero, remains that way for a long span, and then finally starts to decrease slowly to the other field edge.

I got to 1/2 a mile of my landmark snd I knew that very shortly the flat area I had seen the buck in this morning was going to be in plain view.
Glassing through rain splattered binos I saw no antelope.

I knew I needed to get closer to the core area I had seen them yesterday so I leaned over a bit, and slowly made my way forward. Thinking that perhaps I caught a tan horizontal body of an antelope just over the skyline of this field I found a yucca patch and sat down for a moment. My lower half of my body was doing well, as was my top half wearing an old coat that was once in my dad’s closet, and he’s been gone since 2007.

 

[kansasdad]

Eventually the wind blew in such a fashion so that I could tell that the “tan horizontal body of an antelope”was in fact an old piece of farm equipment.

Another band of rain and I ninja’d forward. I was now up on the flat top of the field which means I was probably in full view of any antelope that was paying attention. I channeled my inner waving wheat persona and scooted forward on hands and knees, or making like the Hunchback of Notre Dames.

With the next band of rain I moved about 100 yards and as I was taking my next ninja step I saw horns down the slope, turning towards me. I hit the deck like someone had just yelled “grenade” and unbuckled my pack and pushed it in front of me for a shooting platform.

Peering through the waving grass I could see the horns were moving as if walking and they were coming right at me.

 

[kansasdad]

Finding his horns in the scope and then his nose, he stopped. Stared. Turned slightly to his right a couple of steps and then once again turned straight on. I way a range finder would work with all of the grass in the way, my brain was working in distance estimate. By now he was surely in muzzleloader range.

Several more steps forward. Stare. Turn mostly broadside and angle away just slightly for a couple more steps, turn to be face on. Tilt the head like a dog trying to gain info on what it is looking at. Walk forward. Now I have chest showing and still way to much blowing grass.

Walk forward. Right turn, angled steps, face forward. Scope is rock solid. Hammer is cocked, finger hovering over trigger and perhaps lightly touching.

Walk forward, turn right and angle walk and turn straight on. SABR reticle now halfway between 50/100 markings. Frontal shot gonna be ok?

Head bobbing. Straight on. Turn right and angle and there seems to be a nearly clear alley as he is angling forward broadside.

 

[kansasdad]

Finger pressure applied and then he turns to present face up again. Soooo much grass. Do I dare try to raise up pack and gun to clear the grass risking him charging off??

A couple more steps forward. Now I’m seeing yummy antelope shanks. Turn to the right, this time the alley is there and the finger gets to follow through the report.

BOOM/pop?/ziinnnnnng

The rain prevention measures had preserved the powder. No little feat in this monsoon the last several hours.

If I replay the shooting noises I thought I heard a loud pop. I wonder if the nitrile glove index finger held in place with electrical tape up the barrel had inflated and popped as the gasses expanded, so that my ears could hear the noise.

The next noise was a classic ricochet noise of a bullet hitting something and spinning off of its intended target.

The buck ran to his right about 40 yards and stood there face on trying to see where this loud boom had come from. I had to unbuckle my bino harness, my wader shoulder strap and dig my hand down to my leg pocket where my reloading tubes were residing inside a ziplock bag. Out came my ziplock baggie with my wallet, and then came reloading tubes. My back was towards the antelope as I hurriedly reloaded.

Primer in and gun snapped shut (CVA Optima) I turned to find that the antelope had moved further away, but was still laser focused where I was. Probably further away that I would be willing to shoot unless I knew he was wounded.

In desperation I pulled off my Outdoor Mentors cap that has a creamy white back half, I raised it up and waved the hat at him.

As a kid I remember lifting a white tee shirt on a stick in the air just over a hilltop and seen it draw bucks in closer for my dad.

I saw him head bob, paw at the grass and I’d bet if it was a touch colder I might have even seen vapor come off his nostrils as it seemed to me he was fired up.

He started to move up onto the flat of the hill, so now all I could see every once in awhile was horn or horn/head if there was a gap in the grass. He was heading to get downwind of me, and just about when he would have entered into the scent cone I saw his horns for the last time.

 

[kansasdad]

Elated and deflated simultaneously.

As Chris Berman might have said in Sports Center…..let’s go to the video tape.

The buck was approaching like many prey animals do when they are curious about what they see/smell. Generally coming towards the item of interest, but creating little angle
changes to give better 3D intel.

I should have reloaded and watched him simultaneously, but trying to stay down in the grass made reloading and watching nearly impossible. I thought a faster reload was called for that day.

Should I have raised up a little bit higher to clear all of the grass? The risk is that he would pin me down, and probably realize the danger he was in and taken off. But would he have really??

Why not wait for him to get closer and reduce the amount of grass in a bullet pathway. Perhaps that would have worked. Scent detection was not threatened. Very brisk winds were quartering away from me, so he would have had to go past me to get a sniff.

Any chance he was hit by the bullet or fragments of bullets?? Perhaps but in my mind very very unlikely. He never acted hurt, no limping or wobbling. His gate was without halting or lameness (although to be fair, most of his legs were covered by grass) He didn’t disappear off the flat until he was where I thought he might start
to catch my scent.

A clean miss
Elated and deflated.

 

[Birdbander]

There's been some damn fine take us along hunts recently! Add this one to the growing list

 

[vanish]

Twice while pronghorn hunting I've shot the dirt about 6 feet in front of me. When looking through the scope, a couple inches above the barrel, the slight rise of the ground would go unseen.

I now use a taller bipod and haven't had that happen.