Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game A great antelope hunt in Idaho...

This hunting season is off to a great start. Saturday morning was one of the most fun days afield I've had in a long, long time and we're not even into October yet. I'm getting ahead of myself though.

As per usual, my son (Rowdy) and I applied for controlled hunts for antelope, deer, and elk in Idaho. As per usual, I drew none of those tags. While he also struck out on deer and elk, much to our surprise Rowdy was lucky enough to draw a pretty great tag for antelope. I don't know which of us was more excited. He's a sophomore at the University of Idaho and has his hands full academically this year, so we knew his time would be a bit limited as the unit is 6 hours away from UI. Luckily for him it was a short drive from our home in Boise which allowed ample scouting opportunities for me.

Time seemed to craaaaawl by these last three weeks. I busied myself as much as I could with load development for his rifle in the mornings, and scouting in the evenings. Load development went fairly well. I "built" a fast-twist 25-06 for his HS graduation present a little over a year ago. It wasn't anything fancy. I used the action off the first rifle I ever bought in college some 25 years ago, and a McMillan stock I'd picked up along the way. I had a new stainless 1:7.5 twist barrel screwed on, installed a TT primary trigger for it, and painted it myself. Finished weight was 6.8 pounds and most of the weight was in the barrel out front. I developed a nice load using 131 ACE Blackjacks, which immediately sold out of course. No bullets have been available for more than a year now. I was very pleasantly surprised when Berger announced a 135 Hybrid Long Range in .25 cal earlier this year. It's a "target" bullet, but after a little bit of research I convinced myself they'd likely be just fine. R26 was a rock-star with this bullet, but I quickly ran out of that too. I had three pounds of R23 at hand, and soon developed a repeatable load. It wasn't spectacularly accurate, but it was consistent which is just as important imho. This was a pretty typical group with my given load....






I've killed a handful of bucks with my bow over the years but I'm by no means an expert on judging them. We'd have 5 days to hunt at most, and even that would require him driving down from school on consecutive weekends. After talking it over with Rowdy, we both came to the conclusion that "trophy" hunting probably wasn't a reality given our constraints. Idaho isn't known as trophy state for antelope anyway. Both of us landed on wanting to find him a "mature representative of the species". That's a bit subjective of course, but I was confident we'd know it when we saw it. I located several bucks I thought would fit that description and sent him some terrible photos I took through the spotter. We agreed that both/either of these bucks would be a good one to take if given the opportunity...




Finally, the morning of the 25th dawned after a night of fitful rest. Rowdy's best bud (and college roommate) would be joining us for the adventure. My main hunting partner and buddy wanted to be a part of the hunt as well. 4 is a lot more than I usually like to hunt, but in this case I was pretty confident we'd find something to put a tag on so it could be a great experience to share with our friends. After a relatively short drive from the house, we pulled off the side of the road to park, only to see a pretty fair buck standing there looking at us. He was about 180 yards out. We climbed out of the truck and then I noticed the doe he was tending. He ran her to 150 yards from us and stopped to stare at us some more. We were literally 30 seconds into the hunt and had a mature buck within gun range on a piece of ground we could hunt. We all just started laughing. There was NO WAY Rowdy was going to shoot that buck. Yes it was legal....but it just didn't seem right. To each their own, but that's not the experience either of us had been dreaming of all summer. Here is a picture of our band of goofballs not long after setting off hiking from the pickup....

Starting off great as your adventures always do. Looking forward to the next update:)

We were about a mile into the hike when we came to a watering hole I had previously located. We crept up from below the earthen dam and were mildly disappointed not to see anything nearby. We all broke out the glass to get a better look at some distance terrain.




As I sat enjoying the sun on my face and whispered laughs with Matt and the boys, Rowdy suddenly tapped me on the leg and gestured off to my left. I swiveled my head and was surprised to see this little fellow staring at us from about 65 yards out. I managed to get my phone out for a picture before Cadon realized what was happening....



An hour or so further in we spotted two bucks a couple of miles out. One of them looked really good, but was on the move headed west. We gathered up the optics and headed out on a trajectory I hoped would allow us to intercept them for a closer look. At this point we were a good 4 miles in, and running out of real estate for our unit to hunt. We crested one last hill, and sure enough I spotted a herd of 10 or so antelope. Even from 1,500 yards out, we could see one good buck being run off by a better buck. A quick check with the spotter and we all agreed he was a mature animal worth the pursuit. Cadon and Matt sat down with the spotter, as Rowdy and I back-tracked a half mile or so to get some terrain features between the herd and us for a stalk. We were about halfway to where I wanted to be when I noticed the smaller of the two bucks below us with a doe he had managed up cut from the herd. Rowdy and I sat down and watched the show. The best quartering horses in the world have nothing on a horny antelope buck. He slowly but surely kept working her our direction, and away from the more dominant buck and remaining does. They finally stopped broadside at around 285. He was a mature buck unaware of our presence that I was sorely tempted to let Rowdy have a poke at.

"What you think bud?" I asked. "He's nice" Rowdy responded, "But now that we've seen that bigger buck I'd kind of like to at least give it a try". That was music to my ears. I was a little concerned because there wasn't a lot of terrain left between us and the dominant buck. We duck-walked our way into the last little cut bank left, and I peeked my head over the top for a look. Sure enough, I could see the herd under a distant powerline. They were still a loooong way out there though. With no cover left, we dropped Rowdy's pack and belly crawled for a piece of open dirt between us about another 50 yards. I figured if we could get to there we'd be able to get prone and use that Spartan Javelin bipod I'd recently acquired for just this situation.

I had my right knee replaced in March and I will freely admit that last 50 yards was not a lot of fun. Neither of us were smart enough to bring leather gloves so we were paying the price for that oversight as well. Steadily though, we closed the gap until we were on the open dirt I was looking for. I pulled out the rangefinder and located the buck. It read "580" and that wasn't even the worst part. To my utter dismay, he clearly had us pegged. Apparently the 450 pounds of white dudes crawling through the cheatgrass wasn't as sly as I might have hoped. "I don't think we're going to get much closer bud" I said, "Let's just lay here for a minute and see what happens". It was 85 degrees out, but felt like 100 honestly. We were covered in cheatgrass and tumbleweed stickers, sweating like sinner in church.

Five minutes later and nothing had changed. We were still sweating, and the buck was still staring at us. I felt good on Rowdy’s abilities out to about 600 with the right conditions,…but that's not what we had. The primary issue was the the buck was facing us. On top of that, there was a fair bit of cross-wind. He was at the edge of where Rowdy and I both felt comfortable with him taking a shot. It was time for something drastic. "I have an idea" I said, as I stripped off my shirt. Rowdy looked at me like I had lost my mind. "He knows something is out here" I said...."I'm hoping he thinks its that smaller buck and will come take a look". I rolled over to my azz and started "flagging" the shirt. "Holy chit dad, it's working" Rowdy exclaimed. Sure enough, he was giving us the stiff-legged walk and ever-so-slowly moving towards us.

He finally stopped and turned broadside. The rangefinder now read "540". I told him and he turned the dial to match the distance. "How are the crosshairs bud?" I asked. Rowdy replied, "I feel totally solid. How much wind should I hold?" I'd give him about 6 to 7 inches I answered. I saw him flip off the safety and slowly exhale. "Whenever you're ready I said". I'd barely finished the sentence when he touched one off. I already had my phone out and snapped a quick picture right after the shot as Rowdy looked for him in the scope. My apologies for the finger in the photo...



I snatched up my binoculars and caught a glimpse of the buck hunched up and stumbling backwards. I didn't actually see him go down, but based on what little I saw I was pretty certain he'd made a good shot. I immediately called Matt/Cadon to find out what they could see. Much to my chagrin, they'd had the spotter on us trying to figure out why I was stripping off all my clothes when Rowdy squeezed the trigger. None of us could actually see the buck (or the does) at that point, which lead to some immediate anxiousness for all of us. Rowdy kept saying he felt good at the shot as we gathered up our stuff to head over to where I'd last seen him. We'd cut the distance in half when Rowdy noticed some white near some sagebrush. We pulled out the binoculars and confirmed the buck was down. My son is 19 and well on his way to manhood at this point, but for just a second he was my little boy again as we hooted and hollered and hugged each other just like when he killed his first cow elk at 12. My goodness life gives us some great moments along the way. This was one of those moments.

Matt and Cadon gathered up the spotter and headed our way from some 1,500 yards distant as Rowdy and I approached the buck. We were both thrilled to find that he'd hit him perfectly behind the shoulder. He hadn't gone but about 3 yards from where he was standing at the shot. This is my favorite photo from the hunt as it's the most candid. Rowdy took just a moment to offer a silent prayer of thanks for a fantastic conclusion to the hunt. He's not a Bible-thumper by any means, but he has just enough spirituality to make him a decent kid in spite of liking both beer and girls.



Matt and Cadon arrived and we started taking photos to send to his mama waiting back at the house for word from her boys. He's no threat to make B&C or anything, but he's a pretty fair buck for Idaho...


If it looks like I'm a happy fellow, it's because I am. I hope the rest of the season is half as good as the first day was. I hope the same for all you boys reading this as well.

Looks like an excellent hunt. Congratulations. I do love hunting antelope.

Great pics, great story and what a great day with your boy. Thanks for putting this together!

Great stuff Dave, congrats to the boy and his old man!

Oh yeah, almost forgot…Go Vandals!!!

I love it - congrats to Rowdy!
Thanks for sharing.

Congratulations on a successful hunt!

Great story and pics. That is an incredible experience.

EXCELLENT!

Congrats to the both of you - beautiful buck!!

Congrats to you all! Damn cool write up!

Thanks for the story and pics... Congrats to you and Rowdy..

As Beretzs said above, that was a DARN GOOD write up.....

Gave one the feeling like they were right there with you also... and Great Shot on Rowdy's part.

Job well done all around....

cheers,
seafire

Excellent! I look forward to your write up of your adventures
540 is a poke in the wind

Congratulations nice bucks.

Great hunt and memories. I look forward to your hunt write ups every fall, keep them coming.

That's a very nice mature "goat". Antelope are my favorite critter, and I sure enjoyed your write-up and photos. Thanks.

Nice!!

Loved the adventure !!

Well done boys !