Tell us more.
Cheese
First let me explain how this hunt came to pass. On a bowhunt in 2006 for elk in the Missouri River Breaks region of Montana I sat watering holes for several long days without seeing any elk. A few times each day I would have an antelope come in to drink. This was one of the better ones:
Unfortunately we did not anticipate seeing all the antelope we did, and thus we had not applied for the required archery tag.
With that experience in mind and no September elk hunt on this year’s agenda, I decided to try my hand at a do it yourself, public land, antelope hunt. I consulted Eastmans, bowsite, and the various state websites before settling in on the tags I wanted to apply for. I was looking for units with good public access, good antelope numbers, and a reasonable chance of drawing with no preference points.
As luck would have it, I drew my first choice Wyoming tag for a unit in the central part of the state. Also as luck would have it I was
forced invited to attend a wedding on opening weekend. As a result I found myself driving nearly 15 hours last Sunday across roughly the whole Midwest so that I could start my hunt Monday morning.
I arrived to my unit about 2 hours before sunrise without having slept. I was too keyed up to rest so I simply changed clothes, loaded my pack, and headed out. Once the sun came up I quickly spotted antelope. I had expected to find antelope eventually, but I hadn't expected for them to be everywhere. I chased various groups of antelope around all day, passing on a good buck and failing to close in on a terrific buck. By sunset I was too tired to cook my dinner so I ate a poptart and slept in the back of my truck. I took the time to snap a photo of this smallish buck:
I also ran into a few grouse:
At sunrise Tuesday I was on the trail of a group of about 10 pronghorns that had one potential shooter and one smallish buck in it. They fed over a hill and into a large sage flat. I was confident I could come over the top of the hill and pick my shot. So much for that plan. As I crept over the top 9 antelope fed calmly below me, but the shooter buck was halfway up the hill looking back at me. Busted. He ran several hundred yards to the top of another hill and looked back. The rest of his group watched him but didn't get too stirred up. The other buck continued marking territory and chasing does. I settled in to see what would happen. After 20 minutes of watching the rest of his group, and particularly the subordinate buck, the shooter came running back in to reclaim his position of power. Unfortunately for him, I was waiting. A well placed .270 shot and my hunt was over.
