3 solid days of antelope hunting in West Dakota, and these were the only two shooter bucks I saw in 486 miles on the truck (not counting the drive there or back)

This was the best one I saw, maybe 14", diggers weren't too good.
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I came up around the back of that hill. Belly crawled the last 30 yards and popped up the decoy. He got about 40 yards out and stayed halfway between him and his 6 does. One of his does tried to run off, so when he was busy playing 'cutting horse' I pulled the decoy and ran at his other does (I had nothing to lose) I scattered his 5 other does and he was more concerned with rounding them up than stomping the piss out of my decoy. Finally he just followed all the does once they had enough of my [bleep] and ran.... On to a ranch I didn't have permission to hunt...

Shooter buck number two. He had just the one doe with him... This was north of the highway.
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Travis knows the area well. He made it WAY too easy to gt up on them. He kept pushing his one doe down into a little depression along this coulee, and stayed inside about a 100 yard circle. I snuck into some sage brush about 80 yards away, then waited until his doe came up close (about 20 yards away) then popped up the decoy. She freaked the [bleep] out and ran off with him in tow.... I never saw them again.... They flat hid inside of a gopher hole or something.

Still a little early in the rut to piss one off good enough to fight. The bucks I saw, none of them were exhibiting very aggressive behavior. Numbers on the Hi-line are the worst I've ever seen. The last time I decoyed goats for a buddy there was before we had 900 tags. We hunted one ranch for 2 days, and I had him 2 dozen oportunities to shoot before he tagged about a 13"er. It'll be a while before we have days like that again. I love that more broken topography in region 6 though. You need that for bowhunting... I still had fun....


I'm Irish...

Of course I know how to patch drywall