Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Wyoming Antelope Hunt With Fellow Campfire Member (pic heavy!)

PART I of III

Today is a good day. I just got back to my house after a week-long antelope hunt that began as little more than a wild idea 9 months ago. In January, I was on the phone with fellow 'Campfire member Okanagan and mentioned that I'd really like to try antelope hunting. Surprisingly, he says, "I have a rancher friend in Wyoming; I'll give him a call and see if he'll let us hunt his ranch." So a few days later, I get a call from Okanagan with the news that we can hunt there and just need to draw tags. So we put in as a team and had to sweat it out til July to find out the draw results. Draw day finally came and we got drawn! Woo Hoo!

Last Sunday was finally the day. Okanagan and I met up in Tacoma and headed east. We were making good time until we got caught in a killer dust storm on I-90 near Moses Lake. They actually shut down the freeway. We took a series of side roads and managed to get around it, but visability was literally so bad, we didn't bother looking out the windshield, but instead drove by looking for the lines of the road out the side windows! It took a couple hours to go just a few miles. I was driving and was pretty concerned at a couple points. Anyway, we got through that mess and made it through Idaho and into Montana. We saw our first antelope and started getting fired up for the upcoming hunt.

Monday we woke up in Bozeman, Montana to snow! Lots of it. I was not happy. All the antelope pics I've seen on internet were of guys on sunny days, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, posing with their 'lope looking rested and tan. That was what I wanted! I was tired of hunting in bad weather. But, it looked like it wasn't meant to be. Oh well.


By early afternoon we made the turn onto the road the ranch was on. Our directions said to drive 28 miles. We immediately started seeing antelope and deer--mostly mulies but a few whitetails as well. When we were 10 miles from the ranch we decided to count them. In that distance we saw 137 deer, and that's without making a serious effort to count them. Here's a pic of a group of about 20:


We made it to the ranch, had dinner with the rancher and his family, and then headed up to the cabin where we were staying. It had electricity but no water or plumbing. Here's me brushing my teeth with bottled water, with the outhouse in the background:


Fortunately, the ranch hands' mobile home was next door and we got to use their facilities whenever we wanted to, so we only roughed it as much as necessary. One minor problem with the cabin was that the wood stove brought wasps out of hibernation! They were in the walls and would come out and fly around. Once we got the fliers killed, we decided to kill them in the cracks of the walls so we didn't have to chase them around. Here's a few shots of us with flashlights and knives, hunting wasps (by the way, I killed the biggest wasp! ):




The next morning it was time to hunt! One of the ranch hands jumped in the truck with us and showed us around the ranch. We saw a few herds but they were either too far away, on the wrong property, or had only small bucks. The day started to warm up and the snow began melting fast. After lunch we were on our own and resumed the hunt. At the top of a small hump in the road, Okanagan spotted two antelope at a distance of about 3/4 of a mile. In the pic below, you can see a horizontal line just above the tree. The antelope were just above that.

Okanagan got them in his spotting scope and determined that at least one was a buck and looked like the fork in the antlers was above the ear. We decided to go after it. We drove up the road to a point where we could stalk in from the side and from behind a hill. We sneaked and glassed once we got to the top but they were gone. Okanagan was in the lead and continued to search for them. I was looking off to the side, trying to figure out where they went. Suddenly Okanagan brought his rifle up to shoot. I looked over and saw the buck running at angle away from us. I was in no position to shoot so I grabbed my rangefinder and began to call out ranges. The buck slowed down, thinking he was safe. I ranged him and called out "245 yards" to Okanagan. The buck turned slightly and Okanagan made him pay. Okanagan put a 95 gr Partition from his a custom 6mm Rem into the buck and that was it. Here's Okanagan taking pics of his goat:
[img]http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn21/WadeSamuelson/Wyoming%202009/IMG_1714.jpg[/img]

Here's a better shot of the headgear. Not a monster, but a nice buck for that area:
[img]http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn21/WadeSamuelson/Wyoming%202009/IMG_1721.jpg[/img]

Here's me with the hind quarters in meat bags on a pack frame. You can still see traces of snow on the ground, and on my boots the "gumbo mud" that makes everything slick:
[img]http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn21/WadeSamuelson/Wyoming%202009/IMG_1730.jpg[/img]

Breakfast the next morning was bacon, antelope steak & eggs! Yum!
[img]http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn21/WadeSamuelson/Wyoming%202009/IMG_1741.jpg[/img]

Wednesday we were told that it would start snowing in the afternoon and that we'd get 5 inches. I had some gear suitable for crawling around in the snow, but not a lot. More importantly I just wasn't looking forward to working that hard for my buck! We hunted all morning and saw only 1 group of critters. There was a nice buck in the group but we couldn't get inside of about 600 yards of them.