Author Topic: Wyoming Goatelope (Read 1966 times)

Jeff Vicars · « **on:** October 23, 2005, 05:43:45 PM »

I shot this one and later a doe antelope with my trusty XP-100 .284. Had to follow a large group with the biggest buck I've ever seen, probably 18-19" about a mile or so. They stayed just out of range with a strong crosswind that kept me from trying a shot at that record buck. I squeezed 15 ounces out of a one pound trigger several times, I wanted that buck badly.
The group I was stalking stayed on a slow (for pronghorn) and steady move as I was trying to get the wind directly in my face. This herd then walked right into an even larger herd of about 80 goats.
I belly crawled 150 yards finally getting the wind straight inline with my nose, eased the bipod legs down and the big buck decided it was time to get out of there. He separated his herd from the other and didn't stop as they disappeared over the horizon.
The second herd had several good bucks in it with one extra wide heavy horned buck. This buck became my target of interest after losing all hope of killing the record buck.
I had gotten a reading with the lazer rangefinder on the herd when they were all bunched up and knew the wide horned buck was about 450 yards away, the outer limit of my confidence. I waited a couple of minutes as the antelope became increasingly nervous and moved away from the buck I was after. I held over what I thought was needed and squeezed the trigger. The pistol fired and about a second and a half later I heard the bullet slap the buck. He took one step and fell.
I tried to range the downed buck with the rangefinder, but there was not enough to bounce a signal back. I took a 100 paces toward the buck and tried again. It read 346 yards.
The 150 grain Ballistic Tip entered the right shoulder and exited between the first and second rib behind the left shoulder. The jacket and core separated with the core exiting.
It took two hours to drag the buck back to were we could get the truck to it. Wore all the hair and most of the hide off one side. Almost forgot, had to cross a river too.
I took a big doe the next day. 187 yard shot and a little over half a mile drag.

Hawkeye · « **Reply #1 on:** October 24, 2005, 04:37:36 AM »

Way to go Jeff. Those XP's are knocking down a bunch of goats this year. Good looking goat. How do you like the .284? I have an extra XP center grip that I'm not shooting and want to put a custom barrel on it. I was thinking wild but I can't figure out what I want. I have a 6mm Encore, 243 Encore, 260 XP, 309JDJ Contender. I have most of the calibers covered.
I had the same thing happen on my goat hunt two weekends back in WY.
Crawled, jogged and sat watching a big goat push a herd around a bottom of two hours. It was dry where I was though. I had a guy with me and asked him if he wanted to try for the goat. He said he didn't know. That is all I needed and I was off, down a drainage ditch for a mile. Crawled up over the edge, ranged him at 225yds, put the XP100R- 260 on his shoulder and boom. Dead Right There.
I wanted to get a couple of doe tags but I would have to go 100 miles west to another unit, so I didn't .
Congratulations again. This was my first Antelope hunt and I WILL go back next year.

Mike

Mike Buchholz · « **Reply #2 on:** October 24, 2005, 06:32:26 PM »

Good hunt, Jeff. Taking pronghorns with a handgun is a lot of fun. I have a nice one on my wall that I took about 5 years ago with an Encore pistol. By-the-way, pronghorn antelope are not goats. They actually belong to a taxonomic family all to themselves. There are no closely related species anywhere.

Jeff Vicars · « **Reply #3 on:** October 25, 2005, 03:06:02 AM »

Prairie Goat is a common nickname for Pronghorn Antelope.

Hawkeye I love the .284 Win.. It's my long range standby.

Redhawk1 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 25, 2005, 03:12:06 AM »

Quote from: Jeff Vicars

Prairie Goat is a common nickname for Pronghorn Antelope.

Hawkeye I love the .284 Win.. It's my long range standby.

Jeff Vicars good story and pic, congrats.

We call them speed goat's also.

wyocarp · « **Reply #5 on:** October 31, 2005, 05:17:25 AM »

Quote from: Jeff Vicars

Prairie Goat is a common nickname for Pronghorn Antelope.

I'd like to know where it is common at. I've lived in Wyoming most of my life and I have NEVER heard of an antelope being called a goat before reading this post.

Also, I've seen a couple of posts on here about taking animals with the XP100's and calling it a handgun. I'm sure to most folks out here, a handgun is something one can put in a holster on your hip. These things are hardly pistols. They are short rifles with a modified stock in my mind.

daveb · « **Reply #6 on:** October 31, 2005, 09:03:26 AM »

Speed Goat is common enough in Montana that people know
what you are talking about. Even goat will do.

We call the XP's and the TC's pistols too, even though they
are a little long for a hoster!

I took an antelop last weekend with my Encore at about 220
yards after a stalk. Sure is fun to hunt them that way.

Dave

Gregory · « **Reply #7 on:** October 31, 2005, 12:45:19 PM »

Quote from: wyocarp

Quote from: Jeff Vicars
Prairie Goat is a common nickname for Pronghorn Antelope.

I'd like to know where it is common at. I've lived in Wyoming most of my life and I have NEVER heard of an antelope being called a goat before reading this post./quote]

I did a google on prairie goat and came up with
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature_and_Environment/1987_November_December/A_Prairie_Goat_Companion
"Giving the lie to its scientific name, Antilocapra americanaliterally, "American antelope-goat"the pronghorn in fact is no antelope at all, nor a goat (though it is commonly called a prairie goat by Westerners),"

I'm surprised you never heard the term.

wyocarp · « **Reply #8 on:** October 31, 2005, 01:49:15 PM »

Nope, never heard of it. It has never been "common" in Laramie where I am living to call an antelope a goat. Maybe it is more common for easterners to call them that when they come to Wyoming to hunt antelope.

wyocarp · « **Reply #9 on:** October 31, 2005, 02:05:01 PM »

Quote from: daveb

We call the XP's and the TC's pistols too, even though they
are a little long for a hoster!I took an antelop last weekend with my Encore at about 220 yards after a stalk. Sure is fun to hunt them that way.Dave

I know that people are calling them pistols, but I think there ought to be a new name or category for that type of weapon. They really aren't pistols. By the way Dave, I do hunt with pistols and have all but given up hunting with a rifle, maybe that is why I don't feel that the Contender types shouldn't be called pistols.

jro45 · « **Reply #10 on:** November 01, 2005, 01:03:07 AM »

Congradulation! That was a long shot with a handgun!

daveb · « **Reply #11 on:** November 01, 2005, 03:21:09 AM »

Wyocarp,

You might have a point about the TCs and XPs and Strikers. I definietely
see my TC with a 15" barrel as different than my Casull with a 7.5" barrel.
The range limitations are quite different. On the other hand, the TC is a
single shot weapon. Also, putting a scope (which I don't have) on a large
bore revolver makes it quite a different tool also. The hunting descriptions
I've read of the 460's and 500's tell me that these revolvers are a whole
lot like my TC in terms of range limitations than not. I'm not sure how to separate these guns. Weight, barrel length, action type? Should be lots of opionions here. I do know that you have to use all of them differently than a rifle.

Jeff Vicars · « **Reply #12 on:** November 01, 2005, 04:19:42 AM »

wyocarp which handgun(s) do you hunt with?

WNY_Whitetailer · « **Reply #13 on:** November 01, 2005, 07:54:41 AM »

Good job Jeff...You should be proud of that kind of shooting...

wyocarp · « **Reply #14 on:** November 01, 2005, 08:27:33 AM »

Quote from: Jeff Vicars

wyocarp which handgun(s) do you hunt with?

Jeff, currently I am enjoying and exploring what the Smith .500 will do. I had a holster made to carry them. I have a performance center with a scope and one without and then a 4" "carry" one.

I'm thinking that an xp or tc or similar weapon because of the action, the calibers, the barrel lengths, and the stocks, that there ought to be a reclassification. It has fewer similarities to the pistol than a rifle does to a shotgun. Of course, with the different loads and barrels, some of the shotgun configurations are rifles.

Gregory · « **Reply #15 on:** November 01, 2005, 12:37:15 PM »

Quote from: wyocarp

Quote from: Jeff Vicars
wyocarp which handgun(s) do you hunt with?

Jeff, currently I am enjoying and exploring what the Smith .500 will do. I had a holster made to carry them. I have a performance center with a scope and one without and then a 4" "carry" one.

I'm thinking that an xp or tc or similar weapon because of the action, the calibers, the barrel lengths, and the stocks, that there ought to be a reclassification. It has fewer similarities to the pistol than a rifle does to a shotgun. Of course, with the different loads and barrels, some of the shotgun configurations are rifles.

wyocarp
Do you fire that Smith 500 with one or two hands?
According to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
Main Entry: hand·gun
Pronunciation: -"g&n
Function: noun
: a firearm (as a revolver or pistol) designed to be held and fired with one hand

So if you're using two hands on that 500, it's not strictly a handgun either.

I hunt with a TC scoped Contender and by law in Illinois it's a handgun, so I have no beef with what anyone chooses to call a handgun as long as it meets the legal definition for hunting.

wyocarp · « **Reply #16 on:** November 01, 2005, 05:42:17 PM »

Greg, by your definition, it is what it is "designed" to do. So it wouldn't matter if a person shot a rifle with one hand if it wasn't "designed" for that. To answer your question, I shoot them both ways.

xphunter · « **Reply #17 on:** November 02, 2005, 03:34:45 AM »

Jeff,
Good job in your stalking and shooting.
That cartridge in an XP is very capable of one-shot kills at the range you used it.
Sounds like you did good prep work ahead of time.
Congrats!
I used a XP-100 in 284 Win for over 10 years and had great success with it (I used the 140 NBT for PD's through mulies and 140 Partition for elk). I lived in Colorado and have heard and used the phrase Prairie Goat myself.
The XP that was chambered in 284 Win just got a new barrel in the last year and is now a 6mm-284. Plan to hunt with it for deer this hunting season.

Dan Walker · « **Reply #18 on:** November 02, 2005, 05:01:29 PM »

Congrats on the nice goat.
I live in Casper, and work at a lumber yard. We have a bulletin board at work festooned with recent hunting pics from our customers and employees.
There are probably 10 or so pics of big antelope bucks on there, including one with 4 horns. I'd say around half of our customers that talk about hunting, use the terms goat and antelope interchangeably.
I reckon things are just different down there in Laramie.
As for what he shot his goat with, I could care less if it was a handgun, hand rifle or a trebuchet. What he did was legal,ethical, and praiseworthy.

Gregory · « **Reply #19 on:** November 05, 2005, 12:53:43 AM »

Quote from: Dan Walker

Congrats on the nice goat.
I live in Casper, and work at a lumber yard. We have a bulletin board at work festooned with recent hunting pics from our customers and employees.
There are probably 10 or so pics of big antelope bucks on there, including one with 4 horns. I'd say around half of our customers that talk about hunting, use the terms goat and antelope interchangeably.
I reckon things are just different down there in Laramie.
As for what he shot his goat with, I could care less if it was a handgun, hand rifle or a trebuchet. What he did was legal,ethical, and praiseworthy.

Dan well said, and thanks for adding a new word to my vocabulary.

myronman3 · « **Reply #20 on:** November 05, 2005, 03:05:47 AM »

thanks for sharing with us, jeff. outstanding shooting, also.

that is one thing i would like to do, is go on an antelope hunt. i would us a set up similar to what you used. except....

that drag didnt sound fun. you might want to look at getting a game cart. we use one when we are hunting back in the sticks on public land where there is no vehicle access. kind of sucks, but that is what keeps out the slackers. game carts are a real blessing in those situations.

Jeff Vicars · « **Reply #21 on:** November 05, 2005, 08:30:58 AM »

I stopped at Cabelas on the way out and bought a Deer Sleigh'R but left it at camp. I sure could have used it.