257Tony
Long Time Member
- Messages
- 4,178
Got back today from my CWMU pronghorn hunt. 7 years of waiting and I finally got to go on my first ever Pronghorn hunt.
We arrived yesterday at about 9am and got checked in, set up camp and hit the field by about 10:30. I had a self imposed rule of no shooting on the first day! So we just drove around and got to know the place a little bit, practiced our glassing and stalking techniques. The Bucks were starting to rut, so they were acting fairly stupid, it was the Does you had to watch out for! We saw 12 bucks that first day, all from the road, with no serious effort being made to locate, because I was having a tough time controlling my trigger finger! The biggest Buck we saw the whole trip just happened to be the first one, about 5 min out of camp, LOL! Oh well, we still did fairly good, and had an ABSOLUTE BLAST!! This was by far one of the funnest hunts I have ever been on, I wish I would have had like 7 tags.
We hit the road early this morning and spotted a really nice Buck with about 30 Does about 1/2 mile down in a draw, so we put the sneek on him. Our planned out stalk worked to perfection and we ended only 150 yds from him, with him having no clue we were there, only forgot one thing... I had given my younger Brother the gaurantee that he would get to shoot first, and he must have been a little exited, as he missed high by about 2 feet. Oops. So we trudged back to the truck and headed back to a spot where we had seen 2 nice Bucks the night before, and they were right back where we left them. We put on our stalking shoes again and were busted by the Does, bummer! Back to the Truck and down the road some more, this time its my 6 yr old Boy that spots one off the road a ways. This time we put a little more effort into our stalk and got around behind the Buck where we had some little hills for cover, worked to perfection and we were rewarded with a 100 yd shot. This time he made good and hit right through the heart! So we took our pics and a little more video, got him back to the Truck and headed back the way we came.
Its about 11 am now and we decide to do big loop on our way back to camp for lunch. Well we hadnt gone 10 min when I spot a Buck off in the sage, he looks fairly good so we decide to get a closer look. We get to less than 200 yds and I can see he has decent length, not much mass, but nice Ivory tips. It was the white that sold me, so I let my namesake speak, and that was all she wrote....
My brother with his Buck--79"
Me with my 73" pisscutter
We pretty much had the half the Ranch to ourselves, the Elk hunters were up in the high country, and we had the low end to ourselves, no other Antelope hunters there at that time. I got a lot of video footage, and put the the kill shots on Google video for you guys. I picked out a few things that the infamous "MM ethics police" will surelt pick up ;-)
1.Yes, my boy was wearing orange, he just took it off for our big time Hollywood walk up shot.
2. My truck was parked behind and below my brothers buck, hence the "dont shoot my truck"
3. The road that my buck died on was closed, and we didnt even know about it till we got to him.
4. Yes, I call them "Lopers"
5. Sad that I have to put this stuff, but I know you guys are all perfect, stand up hunters!
Here is the vid.........
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1635666849534764504&hl=en
We arrived yesterday at about 9am and got checked in, set up camp and hit the field by about 10:30. I had a self imposed rule of no shooting on the first day! So we just drove around and got to know the place a little bit, practiced our glassing and stalking techniques. The Bucks were starting to rut, so they were acting fairly stupid, it was the Does you had to watch out for! We saw 12 bucks that first day, all from the road, with no serious effort being made to locate, because I was having a tough time controlling my trigger finger! The biggest Buck we saw the whole trip just happened to be the first one, about 5 min out of camp, LOL! Oh well, we still did fairly good, and had an ABSOLUTE BLAST!! This was by far one of the funnest hunts I have ever been on, I wish I would have had like 7 tags.
We hit the road early this morning and spotted a really nice Buck with about 30 Does about 1/2 mile down in a draw, so we put the sneek on him. Our planned out stalk worked to perfection and we ended only 150 yds from him, with him having no clue we were there, only forgot one thing... I had given my younger Brother the gaurantee that he would get to shoot first, and he must have been a little exited, as he missed high by about 2 feet. Oops. So we trudged back to the truck and headed back to a spot where we had seen 2 nice Bucks the night before, and they were right back where we left them. We put on our stalking shoes again and were busted by the Does, bummer! Back to the Truck and down the road some more, this time its my 6 yr old Boy that spots one off the road a ways. This time we put a little more effort into our stalk and got around behind the Buck where we had some little hills for cover, worked to perfection and we were rewarded with a 100 yd shot. This time he made good and hit right through the heart! So we took our pics and a little more video, got him back to the Truck and headed back the way we came.
Its about 11 am now and we decide to do big loop on our way back to camp for lunch. Well we hadnt gone 10 min when I spot a Buck off in the sage, he looks fairly good so we decide to get a closer look. We get to less than 200 yds and I can see he has decent length, not much mass, but nice Ivory tips. It was the white that sold me, so I let my namesake speak, and that was all she wrote....
My brother with his Buck--79"
Me with my 73" pisscutter
We pretty much had the half the Ranch to ourselves, the Elk hunters were up in the high country, and we had the low end to ourselves, no other Antelope hunters there at that time. I got a lot of video footage, and put the the kill shots on Google video for you guys. I picked out a few things that the infamous "MM ethics police" will surelt pick up ;-)
1.Yes, my boy was wearing orange, he just took it off for our big time Hollywood walk up shot.
2. My truck was parked behind and below my brothers buck, hence the "dont shoot my truck"
3. The road that my buck died on was closed, and we didnt even know about it till we got to him.
4. Yes, I call them "Lopers"
5. Sad that I have to put this stuff, but I know you guys are all perfect, stand up hunters!
Here is the vid.........
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1635666849534764504&hl=en