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Antelope in the Snow

When I think of antelope hunting in Wyoming, snow is never in the equation. Surely I worry about what rain will do to the unpaved roads that crisscross the prairie. I consider, and prepare for heat. The chill of an early fall morning is accounted for in my planning, but never before has the threat of snow caused me any concern. This year, that changed.
Two friends from Pennsylvania and I planned an antelope hunt for this year back in the spring. When they failed to draw tags in the units closest to my home in Wyoming, we went to the fall back plan of the left over tag draw and the doe /fawn tags that are usually available over the counter in the areas of the state with the highest antelope populations. Eric and I both drew tags, although in separate but adjoining areas, and Charlie, who has hunted antelope before, and already has a buck on the wall, decided he buy a doe/fawn tag once he got here.
Call it fate, karma, or just bad luck, but the signs all started to show that this trip was going to be an adventure. Little things just started to show themselves. I ran short on bullets for my rifle and would be hunting with only five rounds for my favorite gun and would have to pack a backup along, just in case my shooting went to crap. I found that two of the tires on my fifth wheel were severly sunchecked and I felt replacement was in order. Work started picking up as departure day approached. The pickup suffered a mechanical failure of the 4wd system two days before departure. Charlies wife was tasked with a project that threatened to keep her at home. Just little things that started to make me think this trip wasn�t going to be perfectly smooth. As the summer had wore on, and the time of our hunt slowly approached the weather was typical Wyoming early fall: Cool, pleasant and dry. Perfect antelope hunting weather, and then the week before our hunt the forecast changed. A low pressure system in the Gulf of Alaska was headed our way and would meet up with a cold air mass moving down from Canada and would produce a nasty, slow moving storm that would likely dump nearly a foot of snow on the foothills around Casper, and two or more feet in the passes that we would need to traverse to reach Casper. With the warm weather that we had been having to this point in the year, road conditions wouldn�t likely be bad, except at the highest points, and then just during the storm itself. The unpaved roads of the prairies, the roads that we needed to be clear and dry in order to hunt would be a whole different matter all together.
Now, Charlie, Sue, and Eric are great folk and understand that weather is something you just have to live with, but they had spent a fair amount of money on tags and airfare etc., and it would really kill me if they came all the way out here and then we couldn�t go hunting. It was the hand we were dealt, and we�d just have to play it out. On the drive over, through snow showers, and a howling wind, we talked about it and all had the same conclusion: We�d hunt from the hard road. None of us were particularly pleased, but it was that, or no hunting at all. Even walking the roads on the prairie was too dangerous in the weather conditions we were faced with. Clinging mud, wind, and wet snow is a dangerous combination.
The campground behind the Fort Caspar Museum is open year round, but they recently did some renovations to the utilities that left the entire place a mess of sandy mud and didn�t bode well for the weekend. I thought for sure the girls were going to have a pure fit. While we could always remove our boots before getting into the trailer, the two German Shorthairs still haven�t learned to wipe their feet. I guess the snow helped in that respect.
We awoke the next morning to more crappy weather. Why can�t the weatherman be wrong about bad weather when you really need him to be? There was no sense in rushing out early into that mess, so we had a leisurely breakfast then loaded the gear and headed out.
We drove into the area and turned onto the first hard road that ran out into some state and BLM land. We drove to the end of the road. When we reached the end of the gravel and the end of the public land at the same time we turned around, having seen not one single antelope. Uh Oh! On the return trip, I saw a topographical feature that just screamed antelope in a snowstorm, a small bowl maybe 200yds across and not more than 6 to 10 feet deep. Just enough to get out of the wind. And on further examination revealed a shape that looked an awful lot like an antelope. I pulled the truck to a stop and brought up the glasses. The shape was indeed an antelope doe, 450 yards away and not the least bit interested in us. Now, antelope generally don�t hang out alone, so I looked closer, and found that she was standing next to a sage bush that had a buck antelope laying under it. Eric, whom I really haven�t hunted with before, could not believe that I had seen those antelope. It�s vain, but I love it when people get excited about the way I spot game. Even for a first buck, that one was too small to shoot and there really wasn�t any way to put on a stalk, way too open. We drove on, not a � of a mile away, we spotted a large band only 200yds off of the road standing where no antelope had been seen just 10min before. They had been laying down and were partially covered in snow, and we had driven right on by. This band of course had a couple of bucks that would make fine candidates for a first buck, but they of course were not on public land. Eric was disappointed but still pumped.
We drove up the highway into another area of the unit that had larger blocks of state and BLM land. We pulled off and glassed a few spots, moving in and out of snow showers. We spotted a large band of antelope off in the distance in an area that we felt offered us the opportunity for a stalk and we gave it a try. The large band turned out to be a giant band of over 100 antelope and maybe as many as 200. We never got within a half mile. They had us nailed. We gave them up with out a chase and moved on. We spotted a bunch of smart goats, standing next to the fence on private property, and then, as we were driving along, we spotted two groups of dumb goats. They were down in a stream bottom, somewhat protected from the wind, but decidedly on BLM land. We drove past, turned around, glassed the goats and found that several were shooters. We drove on and parked the truck behind a hill. We walked down a draw, and crept around the end of it fully expecting to find the antelope across the stream bottom and about 200yds away. Just as we were nearing the point were we thought we�d have a shot opportunity, we spotted a buck on the ridge above where we had seen the antelope. Busted again! Antelope in a snow storm in the 3rd week of the season are SPOOKY! When we left the truck, I had a feeling this was going to be THE stalk. This was where we were going to get Eric his first antelope, so I was ready to give up yet. I suggested we get down in the creek bottom and see if we couldn�t get up the that other group of goats. Having no better plan, Eric and Charlie agreed.
As creeks and streams go, this one wasn�t much to talk about. The water was maybe 4 inches deep and a foot and a half across at most. But the banks were six or eight feet high in most places, vertical, and composed of the slickest, nastiest mud it has ever been my displeasure to come across, and I used to trap muskrats in tidal marshes in Maryland! Just to make the whole experience that much more fun to talk about, that cursed little creek snaked back and fourth across that bottom from side to side forcing us to slip and slide down the cattle and game crossings over a dozen times.
About the time I was ready to call it quits on this snow covered slice of muddy paradise, I spotted an antelope ahead. As luck would have it, there was a small hump in the bottom that would offer us perfect stalking cover if only we could cross about 100yds of open ground. We tried to use the stream bed but that was just too inhospitable. I decided to suggest one of those hunting show stalking techniques, � Hey guys, lets play cow!� �HUH?!� I explained the technique. �Eric, you hunch over just a little, I�ll hunch over and walk behind you, Charlie will walk even lower behind me. Just walk slowly, and a little aimlessly towards the hump till those goats can�t see us anymore.� I know Eric though I was nuts, but he was game so off we went. It worked!!!! We made to the hump and crawled to the top. Much to my surprise, there were not only the four antelope I had seen in the one group before, but also two dozen more, most likely from the group that had busted us previously and they seemed to be unaware of our presence. Not only that, but they were close enough that I didn�t even bother ranging them. Charlie and I coached Eric into shooting position and he picked his buck, and then patiently waited for him to get clear of the does that were milling around with him. I suspect that Eric got a little loose at the seams as it took him four shots to finally down the buck, and he later admitted that he thinks he was shooting at the antelope, and not at just one spot on the antelope, causing him to shoot high. No harm, no foul, we didn�t hit any other antelope and finally got a buck for Eric.

I left Charlie and Eric to the field dressing chores, and crossed that stream (AGAIN!) and went and got the truck. Straight line distance, it was 8 tenths of a mile back to the truck, calf deep in snow, round and around that creek, it was a lot further than that, but what a wonderful stalk. We may have been spotting antelope from the road, but we were earning them on the ground.
Charlie�s antelope
was less dramatic but noteworthy for the fact that it started with a 250yd pistol shot, and culminated in a 275yd finisher with Eric�s 264 win mag which likely wasn�t at all necessary, but why take chances?
My own hunt involved walking over up a small hill in failing light, sideways snow, and 20mph winds. A single miss on a doe at 300yds from kneeling and I decided to call it a day. The weather forecast for the following day was even bleaker than before: 6 to 12 inches of new snow overnight and more wind. I already have an antelope in the freezer, elk season is just starting, and the prospect of driving 6hours over two passes, with who knows how much snow on them towing 30� of fifthwheel�. It was time to call it mission accomplished, take yes for an answer, and go home. We pulled out of Casper at 10am the following morning with lots of fresh snow on the ground.
The ride home was uneventful. The trip had been exhausting and fun in a way that is probably only known to hunters. I probably wouldn�t do it again��.this year, but ask me again next year. I�d lay money on doing it all over again. Even that cursed little stream.

Some day I'll do an Antelope hunt! Thanks for sharing.

Snow does add a new swist to hunt antelope some time it makes for a hard retrival.

Congrats! thanks for the great story and pics!

got lost,
I see you worry about matching the camo to the terrain as much as Charlie, Eric and myself LOL!

Other than a wind stopper sweater (a gift), woolrich is the closest thing to camo I wear for big game.

LoL, thats what I was thinking!! Nice hunt/story though.

Great story & pics, looks like a unique hunting experience your friends will not soon forget!

SRM you did good! Great story and pics!

Snow goats!

Cool!

Cool!

Drove through SD and WY, this last week. ManOMAN.......there were soooooooo many of them I couldn't believe my eyes. They were off at a distance....on the hillsides in groups of 10-30.....more than I thought I'd see. It was cool, as I'd never seen the critter before.

Was some bitter azz cold wind and temps....didn't envy them<grin>...

How do they taste?

Like pronghorn. I like it!

Now, isn't that a help? Really, cleanly killed, well cared for, and properly cooked, they are excellent.

Antelope run the gamut in flavor from pretty sagey to nearly beef. It seems like those shot earlier in the season, when the rut is in full swing have a stronger sage taste to them. These that we just killed, I could hardly believe were antelope. The biggest thing, is don't chase them all over the country, cool them immediately, and don't gut shoot them.

Antelope hunting is just plain fun.

you got that right!

Nice ones!

Dogs love to go on big game hunts.

I think I was hunting in that same storm, I was just at a little lower elevation.

Believe it or not, I've even had that 'play cow' ruse work successfully on elk in open country.

Sounds as if you may have been hunting in the same general area as I was (63). I went the first weekend in October. The weather was different than yours though. Was the first head of big game I've ever taken with a centerfire rifle.

Areas 26 and 31.