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.

PART II

In the afternoon, we spotted a herd in a huge pasture about 800 yards off the road, partly up the slope of a hill near some trees. They were already keyed up, watching us from the moment we stopped the truck. I didn't figure we'd have much chance going straight at them through the field. Okanagan suggested that we drive back down the road, up past the ranch to the other end of the trees. I could then walk side-hill through the trees and sneak up on them using the trees as cover. It was a brilliant plan.

After dropping me off with my rifle and a radio, Okanagan took my truck and the other radio back down the road to where we spotted the antelope originally. I made my way through the trees probably about 3/4 of a mile to a mile when I heard Okanagan tell me I was close. I went a little further and saw them. I got down and ranged them at about 320 yards. Close enough. I put down my pack and extended the legs of my bi-pod, but I couldn't get enough elevation. I put the pack on a nearby sage bush but that was too wobbly. I decided to make my way to a cluster of trees about 150 yards ahead of me. Once there, I rolled out into the open and started looking for the antelope. I spotted the buck out in the pasture and had a clear shot between two trees. Okanagan had his spotting scope on the buck and told me that his horns were a little uneven, that the left was shorter than the right. This concerned me. I set up for the shot, dialed the Leupy 3.5-10x40 all the way up to 10x and then looked at the buck through my 7x rangefinder (a Leica CRF 1200). The horns were indeed not perfect, but I had a clear shot, the range was only 162 yards, and 5 inches of snow was on its way. I decided to shoot.

The buck saw me switch to my rifle and chamber a round. He turned and faced me directly. I aimed for the the base of his neck and fired. He absolutely dropped and never twitched. Later we found out that I hit his spine and knocked a huge chunk out of it. Bone fragments jello'd his left-side lung. It was about as good as I could hope for. Here's a few pics:




My rifle is a factory Rem 700 SPS .25-06 that I bought off the classifieds here from Crimson Tide. It has had a trigger job but is otherwise as-is from the factory. It shoots very well and I always enjoy hunting with it. The bipod is also a purchase from the classifieds here but I can't remember who sold it to me. The rangefinder was bought new from Doug at Cameraland. The blue tape is a shout out for Jeff O (and is not intended to be a dig or criticism, but rather, simple fun).


Here is the view from the goat back to the truck. In order to go get some lunch quicker, we decided to drag the buck the 800 yards back to the truck and deal with him later. Snow was already falling and we were hungry--the rancher's wife had T-bone steaks waiting for us for lunch!


And here's the view the next day after the snow from the spot where the truck was, looking up to where the buck lay:


The next morning we went looking for cat tracks in the new snow but didn't find anything. Then we spent the afternoon cutting meat and grinding hamburger. You can see the old style grinder on the side table on the left:


Almost done!
[img]http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn21/WadeSamuelson/Wyoming%202009/IMG_1774.jpg[/img]

We pulled out on Friday and made it to Missoula, MT that night. We stopped on the way and mailed our skulls to campfire member BigSky. He has a beetle pit and is going to do our skulls for us!

On the way home, we saw elk, 500+ deer, and even some elk (in both Montana and Idaho). We practiced our blacktail calls in the truck (my wife doesn't seem to enjoy me blowing on calls as we go down the road) and Okanagan told me about a million stories of the million animals he has hunted! It was great! We finally got back to Tacoma where we divided up some meat, loaded his gear and said our goodbyes.

It was a fun trip! I'm off to bed now, but tomorrow I'll try to post a few pics of us tagging along with one of the ranch hands while he hunted elk.

awesome story and great pics, thank you.

sorry you had crappy weather.

you goin back next year ?

Thanks for the great story and pictures. That antelope hunting is some fun stuff!! Those are both nice bucks and it looks like a pretty darn nice ranch to be able to access.
Congrats on a fine hunt & buck.

Wade, this was a great read over my morning pot of coffee! Looks like you two had a fun hunt and two nice bucks antelope to boot. I like the part with the blue tape too trouble maker.......lol....

Very Nice

Waders; great read and pictures! You guys sure had a blast. Nice antelope you two shot. That is one heck of a nice rancher. Pretty country to be sure. Get some rest. Tom

Wade, looks as if you had a great trip and fun time, that's what it is all about and the lope was a bonus.
The weather over that way is always fun, 70+ one minute and snowin/hailin the next. Glad you had a safe trip.

Great story Wade!
You'll remember that I had a similar experience with two friends from Pennsylvania last year at this time. I kept promising gorgeous weather and a simple hunt and we got a blizzard and lots of crawling around in the snow. Wyoming in the fall, what can you do?

The only guarantee in Wyoming is that the weather is never predictable, I sure miss hunting there.
Great story & pics!

Reading stories like tis makes me jealous, also makes a great way to start my day. Thanks.

Wade; Looks like you guys had a great time! Great write-up and pictures. I had to laugh when I saw the one of you shivering in the snow at the beginning of the trip.

Glad you got through the duststorm ok; I saw an article about it in the paper here, but didn't have any idea you two were in it.

Again, great write-up and pictures!

Congrats guys!! Well done..........

Burr..........

Here is PART III

After getting the antelopes butchered and wrapped, one of the ranch hands said he was going elk hunting. Naturally our ears perked up and Okanagan and I looked at each other, already trying to calculate a way to get an invite to tag along. Okanagan has impeccable social graces and would never invite himself along on another man's elk hunt. I, on the other hand, am somewhat less reserved about such things. So, I made a subtle overture that went something like, "Elk hunting?! Cool! Can we go with you??!!" The ranch hand was a perceptive young man and managed to discern that my backhanded beat-around-the-bush question meant that we would accept an invitation if asked ( ). So he agreed to take us along and off we went. We drove several miles to some "canyons" (they were more like medium sized hills to anyone from the Rockies or Cascades). Regardless, it was absolutely stunning terrain! Here's a shot of Okanagan and the ranch hand glassing:


And here's a couple views of the countryside:




We decided to split up to cover more territory (and probably give the ranch hand some peace). Okanagan and I took one radio and went down one slope into a small draw and the ranch hand went over the other side. We agreed that we'd all work in the direction of the same ridge line up ahead and then would all angle in the same direction. That would leave the ranch hand behind us, but he said he'd just walk fast to catch up when it got dark.

In the draw we were working, Okanagan and I came across a bull with a very nice rack, but...he was already dead. We couldn't really determine what killed him but we saw that the top two tines of his left side were busted off. Otherwise he would have been a fairly heavy 6x6 instead of a 6x4:






Interestingly, a magpie took a fancy to me and started following me. As I walked up a slope he would bounce from tree to tree, landing in limbs that were right at eye level to me. Finally he landed about 4 feet from me and started squawking. I asked he if wanted me to take his picture and he squawked "yes." So he posed for this shot:
[img]http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn21/WadeSamuelson/Wyoming%202009/IMG_1780.jpg[/img]

Ultimately, we didn't get an elk. The ranch hand saw a 4x4 bull but he "didn't want to shoot a small one." He is looking for the herd bull and has until December to seal that deal.

And for no particular reason, I'll add a pic of some geese that I took with my camera pressed up against my binoculars. The geese are over 900yds away:
[img]http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn21/WadeSamuelson/Wyoming%202009/IMG_1737.jpg[/img]

Anyway, that's about it. Again, it was an absolutely FABULOUS trip and Okanagan is about the finest hunting partner on the planet. I can't wait to try some of his calling techniques--both varmint and blacktail!

Great read! (Especially the praise. Hey, Wade's not a bad hunting partner himself, a pleasure to be around, to travel and hunt with).

I got to live the hunt again in these posts, and it was an exceptionally good one. Wade was kind to me in his account of both my shooting and boring him with stories.

The stalks on both of our bucks were great fun. After an approach stalk and crawl, my buck suddenly stood up and took off within 40 yards from where it was lying in the sage. Then I got to see Wade stalk his buck with enough suspense to sell tickets to watch. That last 150 yards he sneaked sealed the deal and marked Wade as a real hunter to me. As I watched him crawling and pushing his pack ahead, I didn�t think he could get closer without spooking the antelope. The buck had a herd of ten or so does with him plus a mule deer doe was lying in the sage within 30 feet of him, and that�s a lot of eyes and ears to evade.

Wade�s buck has a tip broken and splintered on its left horn from recent fighting and that gives it character I really like. The horn tells a story as soon as you look at it. They say that the antelope bucks in that area don�t produce big horns, so unique features add value to me.

One further gear tidbit: the knee pads someone here on the Campfire suggested were a fabulous addition to my stalking ensemble. They are so easy to wear and practical for any need to get a knee on the ground that from now on I will have a pair in my hunting pack always, for deer, predators, everything.

Congrats, that looks like a great trip.

On my buck, Wade stood beside me and called the range in yards as the antelope ran away. I've never had anyone do that with a range finder and it was amazing how it helped and gave absolute confidence to the shot. It made the difference in hitting the buck, no doubt in my mind. I thought that it was farther and would probably have shot over it. Wade also made a savvy call to contour the last rise to the buck rather than go straight over the top at the last place we'd seen him. It put us in position to see and shoot him rather than have him in our blind spot under the slope below us. Hunting alone is excellent but good teamwork with a compatible partner is the best.

That there is one of the better write-ups along with photographs that I've read in a while. Wade as you know I'm down with the flu bug right now so it was really nice to mentally escape and read about your hunt. That "unhappy-in-the-snow" photo is a classic. I've seen that look many times since moving to Montana. Congrats to the both of you on a job well done!

x2

Great story guys! Did you get the ivories out of that dead elk?

Great pics! Congrats on a fine hunt.

No, but the ranch hand plans to go back for the antlers and I imagine he will get the ivories. I tried to check to see if they were still in his mouth, mainly to see if a human had been there before us. But his hide was so stiff it would have required some cutting or more handling of the rotting carcase than I wanted to do, and we didn't take the time. We walked in the dark to get out of there as it was.

Yeah, the kneepads were great--especially in an area with a lot of cactus! I will definitely put mine to good use in the future!

Nice going guys!!! Nice photos and story too!

Very cool man. Bigger antelope than I've ever killed...

cool hunt, Wade!!! great pics and story... truck is loaded and i'm heading out for the job.... enjoy your next few days!!!

Waders,

What kind of blacktail calls are you using, and how do you use them (enquiring minds & etc.)?...thanks...jim

Wade, great hunt.

What bullets did you use in your .25-06?

Great story and nice photos too! It's good when a plan comes together and you get good memories out to boot.

One question though, on the wasp hunt were you killin' or capin' in the photo by the fridge?

I think he was measuring stingers for the record book.

jim

Waders-Ok - good job and looks like a blast!

Did the wind blow in Wyoming?

Troy, make sure you take the horn "sheaths" off the skulls before applying the beatles. The beatles like them a LOT more than they do the meat. Flinch

Actually we didn't have all that much wind. It was breezy to medium wind most of the time but nothing too bad during the day while we hunted, though one night I thought it was going to blow the roof off the cabin for a little while. I've seen it windy and am glad that we were spared the worst of it.

When we drove out of the ranch yard to start home, it was snowing sideways in strong wind at 19 degrees F. with about four inches already on the ground. Time for us to get out of Dodge. We shot our antelope in the two best windows of good weather that week.

Flinch, thanks for the tip. Troy is up to speed on that and already told us that he will have to remove the horns from the core to keep the beetles from eating them during the skull cleaning.

Are you guys talking about some particular type/brand of knee pads, or just any?

For myself, I just have some generic knee pads. Mine have a plastic cap that protects the patella (knee cap). Just about anything with 1/2 thick foam on the knees would probably work just fine. The cactus spines that I've encountered have been about an inch long really thin and brittle. They don't seem to penetrate a lot but they hurt like hell when they do and they are hard to see both on the ground and imbedded in your knee or palm. And, having one stuck in the joint of your trigger finger makes it absolutely impossible to fire the rifle no matter how big the buck or how much you want to. TRUST ME!