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My life changing elkalope hunt

bigdonniebrasco

Active member
Joined
Jun 23, 2016
Messages
473
Location
Kansas
(Elkalope, because Elk hunts are notorious for being difficult, and Antelope for being easy, and I wanted to make this hunt difficult as far as antelope hunts go)

My hunt ended early last week, and I am still trying to wrap my head around everything. I will start by saying that there is ZERO chance that I could have put this together without the 100% selfless help that I received on this forum!! It’s because of you guys and this forum that I even had the nerve to attempt this! At the risk of sounding dramatic, my life has been changed forever, and I have you all to thank for it.

As some of you may or may not know, I’m 50 this year and I have never hunted anything west of Kansas City, and nothing larger than a whitetail doe! I have always just hunted for meat.

10 mos ago I decided that if I was ever going to fulfill my hunting “bucket-list” I needed to start taking steps to make it happen!
My dream was to shoot a Pronghorn buck, a mule deer buck, and an elk buck before I am too old to get around (would LOVE to get an elk with my bow) The size or class of these bucks would be irrelevant!

I had a few obstacles that I would need to navigate first, but that’s why I started with 10 months before season in Wyoming.

I knew NOTHING about pronghorn and likely couldn’t find Wyoming on a map, I had let myself get embarrassingly out of shape, I had NO gear whatsoever! Worse yet, I didn’t even know what gear to get! I literally had NO clue what I was doing! For all I knew I could just drive to Wyoming, find a goat, and start shooting!
I had to navigate the WY draw process, and point system, and figure out where I would try and shoot my pronghorn.

My first step was to sell my tiny car and get a truck or something that could take me and my gear (yet to be purchased) off the beaten path.
I should also mention that as dumb as it sounds, I wanted to make this hunting trip long, and hard, and I wanted to suffer. You know the old adage, “nothing worth having every comes easy” or something to that affect. If I had to work, I mean REALLY work to be successful at this hunt, then it would be all the more memorable. I was going to backpack in 100% solo! I know a lot of pronghorn hunters scoff at this, but this was to be more than just a “hunt” for me, I really wanted a different type of experience. Had I taken a friend, drove up on a goat, hopped out and poked it, it would have been neat, but not what I was looking for.
I heard someone explain it like this: “If you ride a roller coaster, it’s fun right now, but no one ever says WOW, that roller coaster that I rode 5 years ago was life changing!... but if you suffer, and work, and grind it out, and in the end you succeed at something that you were sure was going to elude you…. Now THAT is something that you’ll carry with you forever, and a story to tell the kids!” …… I paraphrased but you get the picture.
I knew I wasn’t ready for a REAL backpack hunt with higher stakes, and grizzlies, and subzero temps with multiple 100 pound pack-outs! This was to be a tiny taste of what it COULD be and to determine if I might one day have what it takes to go back into some rougher terrain after Mulies and Elk.

I got me a sweet 1999 4Runner, that was in amazing shape, and started getting her ready to be my hunting rig.

One of my passions in life is GREAT beer and GREAT food!! … I gave up beer, and only ate healthy food for almost 8 mos.
I bought a HUGE backpack, and had no idea how to use it or what I’d stuff into it, BUT I did drop in a 50-pound bag of wood pellets and hike 3-5 miles every night, and stadium stairs on weekends. In fact I hiked so much I wore holes in my waist belt before I ever even left for WY!
I had some CHEAP Redhead brand hunting boots (I made the erroneous assumption that these would suffice)
I needed a rifle as all I owned was a really old 30/30. My elderly neighbor had been watching my hiking antics and after a brief conversation he offered to lend me his Weatherby .270.
I also bought the cheapest version I could find of:
1-man tent
OnXmaps chip
Used GPS
Compass
TINY jet-boil type stove
Ultralight sleeping bag
Ingredients to make all my freeze dried meals
Bipod legs
Merino wool base layer (first time with this stuff and it ROCKS)
Hunting pants (the Duluth trading briar pants were AMAZING)
Gloves, kneepads
120 qt cooler
Water purifier (lifestraw type)
Water bladder for my pack
Range finder
Bino’s
Tire chains ………………………… you get the idea, I needed EVERYTHING.

Fast forward, to October, I was 25 pounds lighter, and felt amazing! As Oct 7th got closer I started to get a bit nervous that I had forgotten something, or had bitten off more than I could chew! Keep in mind that I am a computer nerd that sits in a cube all day every day wasting away under fluorescent lights!
I was quite sure that I could get into some real world trouble if I wasn’t careful, and WY would give approximately ZERO cares!

I drove half way one night, slept in my truck, then made the remaining 8 hours on Saturday the 8th. I have watched and re-watched every one of Randy’s pronghorn hunts and had set aside Sat and Sun for nothing but glassing and scouting.
The first day was a lot hotter and dryer that I was expecting! I think it was in the mid 80’s and BRIGHT! Very early in the year I had begun scouting via Google earth and other map servers the easiest unit to draw, and that is exactly where I ended up. I knew all the public roads, where I could and couldn’t camp, and I had printed copies of maps.
It was very surreal to finally be standing on the ground at the exact place that I had been dreaming about. All day at work I would be looking at maps, and 3-d views of the landscape, I would be tracing my route on printed topo maps, to include where I might find water and shelter. ….. yea…… google earth had NOT prepared me for the serious UP, and DOWN, and UP, and DOWN, UP, and DOWN, and UP, and DOWN, UP, and DOWN, and UP, and DOWN, UP, and DOWN, and UP, and DOWN ! These “hills” were a LOT bigger and STEAPER in person and if I was going to reach my intended destination it was going to be BRUTAL!
Day one – I powered on my GPS with my Onxmap chip, and started putting one foot in front of the other. I kept this up for a few hours, as it got hotter and hotter, I think it topped out at about 83 that day, and I was glad that I had 3 gallons of water with me! After one particularly tough grunt to the top of a really steep hill I was spent, and hot! It was then that I realized that there was ZERO shade on top of this mini-mountain! In fact, at shortly after noon, there was no shade anywhere! I loved my new wool base layers but I was rethinking wearing them while hiking mid-day! (rookie mistake).

I’ve gone on enough, but I ended up hiking in many miles, enjoying the solitude, but seeing exactly zero pronghorns! The locals had commented that they had NEVER seen this unit so pressured, and literally every goat within the unit had been either pushed to private or packed home in a cooler.
After several days of hitting all the places that I had planned to hit, I was starting to think that I may have to sulk home, sunburned, wind-burned, dehydrated, blistered and still holding my first big game tag…… what a waste of time, effort, and money. I was already trying to add up how much I could recoup if I sold all my new gear? ;)
At this point I had lost track of the days, but I had blisters in my blisters and my feet were killing me! Surprisingly I was feeling GREAT other than my feet! My cardio, my muscles, everything that I planned came together even better than planned, but if I learned ONE THING……. That I can share with any new hunter…. PLEASE DO NOT underestimate the importance of GOOD boots!! I got to thinking, that no matter how good EVERYTHING else is, the single point of your contact with the earth is most likely going to be one of the most important ones!

One evening I did notice a very skittish heard of about 7-8 pronghorn on private land, but ever so slowly feeding in the direction of public. I left them alone until the next morning, I just camped over the ridge. The next morning I found them in the same draw, so I backed off behind a rise and waited for a while. After about 30 min I peeked back over and sure enough, they were almost on “legal” land! I got all my gear and moved to a better shooting position, and just then I see a group of hunter coming from the other direction looking at the same group! I seriously could have crumpled to the ground and died right there… I was a “husk” and I couldn’t fathom losing this shot opportunity to someone just stumbling upon the heard I’d been watching for many hours! Not to mention that there was only a single buck with the herd. At the last minute these gentlemen and their young sons ducked around and came over to me explaining that they didn’t want to “ruin my hunt”! I could have kissed them both…. Yea, bad idea, but funny visual. Anyway… they asked if I would mind if their sons took a poke at some does, to which I replied “heck no, have at em, just let me have a go at the buck, then let er rip”. That’s when everything gets kind of foggy and I just remember crawling closer, noticing that the buck was staring right at me between two sage bushes, dropping down and firing. He dropped in his tracks, and I was in shock…. I really just freakin did this! 10 months of planning and this really just happened! I had no idea of the range, the shot placement was not optimal, and I was still in shock when the back slapping and high-fiving began!
These guys were some of the nicest guys I’ve ever met! They and their sons had been hitting it HARD, with no luck, and still they backed out when they saw I was moving in… just fantastic character!
They even offered to take a few picts for me, and help me drag it to the nearest road for ease of pack out!

I know I have rambled on and on and ON, and still there’s so much I left out and WAY too much I included, but like I said… I’m still processing all of this!
In the end I only ran into a SINGLE other hunter that filled their tag in this unit! That is NOT to say that I am a great hunter, just an indication of how tough it was in this unit, at this time of year/season!

**** Now to start planning for Mulie and ELK !!! WOOO HOOOO (AND BUY BETTER BOOTS) !!
 

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Last edited:
Way to go! Sounds like you had a great hunt. Congrats! It is always nice to hear about other hunters who are ethical and not so selfish.
 
I've been wondering how your hunt was. Glad to see you had a fun trip! Short hunts can be nice, but the long, tough ones are always more rewarding. It's great to see you came back with a cooler of antelope meat. It's my favorite!

I think Wyoming would be a great place for you to shoot your first elk, now that you got the antelope out of the way!
 
Perfect! Only lifelong Midwesterners (or NON-westerners) can understand some of those feelings, I'm with ya, and these guys helped me a ton as well! Congrats!
 
Beautiful buck! Great photo(s) and what a great story to read! Congratulations! Later, I suspect, with Elk... you may find yourself skunked yet still find a genuine sense of satisfaction as the adventure, the hunt, is an amazing experience! Of course to end the trip with another explanation point (or few) by punching your tag - That's a pretty damn good feeling :)

Again, I really enjoyed your story and WY hunters I've had the opportunity to bump into have been the genuine sort. Always a bad apple here and there regardless the activity... Not yet for myself.

Thanks for sharing your start and travel through your experience. Best of success to your muley and elk hunts. It is a blast just to breath that pine scented, crisp air.
 
the confidence and experience that you gained from this hunt will prepare you for your next adventure. Awesome hunt!
 
Great write-up and great pics ! Glad you were able to have a fun hunt, shoot an antelope and manage to not get bitten by a rattlesnake !
 
Well done neighbor, really the journey and the adventure are the true trophy. If you are not already start building points for a Kansas pronghorn too. Also good insoles, a little pre applied mole skin or even duct tape can be preventive as well.
 
Way to go, man. Great post too. Sounds like you've been bitten pretty hard by the western hunting bug. Awesome!
 
I usually read a paragraph and skip to the pics. Not this time. I appreciate your narrative, thanks for taking the time. Glad you had a great experience.
 
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