In the morning: worship services at the cathedral.
At 1:00 p.m.: blessing of the animals on the Cathedral green. (Mind you we gave thanks that God created animals that provide us with food.)
At 6:00 p.m.: my first antelope with the 6.5X55.
I glassed from the cabin and spotted a small band loafing at the extreme left/middle of this view of Sheep Mountain.
This is pretty open country so I had to stalk clear out of the right side of the picture and get behind those humpy looking hogbacks. Then I could go clear across to the left without being seen.
Here is a view from behind the hogback on a pretty fall day...shirt sleeve weather with light breeze.
When I peeked over the crest only one antelope, a big doe, had not crossed the fence onto private land. She was completely at ease but walking toward a low spot to go under the fence about 75 yards from my position above her. Just as she turned sideways I fired kicking up dust beyond her. I thought I had missed as she dived through the fence and out of sight. Then I saw the band milling around to my right, on the private land. They kept looking off further to the right where I couldn't see. Hmmm.
Well, nothing to do but follow up the shot and see if maybe I didn't miss after all. Those other antelope were looking back at something and I was beginning to suspect I knew what it was.
I found one little blob of lung material the size of a fingernail on my side of the fence. Now I knew what the other antelope were staring at. So I made a judgement call, left my rifle on the public land, crossed the fence and found my antelope about 60 yards beyond.
The moral of this story is, "Follow up every shot no matter how the game reacted." My shot was a perfect double-lung pass through without hitting major bone. The exit wound was over 2" in diameter.
(Rem. 700 Classic, Weaver K3, 140 gr. Hdy. Spire Point over Reloder 19)