I spent the last week of September in Wyoming on a DIY, self-guided hunt chasing pronghorn on public land with a couple of my best friends. I had an any antelope tag and my buddies each had a doe tag. The plan was to hunt the last week of archery season and the first two days of rifle season if we couldn’t get it done with bows. This was my first western hunting trip so I was shooting a lot at longer distances to prepare with both my bow and my rifle. I shoot a lot, anyway, so the longer distances really weren’t an issue, but I have been battling through some shoulder issues the last couple years which boiled over in late August and started to affect how accurate I could shoot. I tried resting things and then toughing it out. When that didn’t work I made the decision to move to a crossbow about 10 days before the trip.
I didn’t know anything about antelope hunting tactics beforehand and did a little research. The “easiest” method was to set up on a water hole in a blind and wait, but I knew from deer hunting that I didn’t want to see the west from inside a popup blind. Other methods included traditional spot and stalk, using decoys, intercepting them on travel routes, etc. I wanted to figure out a way to hunt them with beast tactics, which for me means having a positive attitude, being persistent, and using sign and the most recent intel to tell me how and where to hunt.
Over the course of the first 3 days of hunting, I learned a lot by glassing and watching antelope be antelope. We messed up some stalks by getting seen or getting winded, not using terrain right, not using the right decoy (we had a buck and a doe decoy), using a decoy when you probably should have left it in the truck, etc.. I think the best thing about the area we hunted was that there were enough antelope around that the three of us would each get in 1 to 4 stalks each day.
Day 1, getting inside 300yds was tough. By Day 3, we were consistently getting inside 150-200yds. By day 4 we had developed a system and all of the sudden at least one of us was getting into shooting range each day. I decoyed in a buck with 3 does to 80yds and missed a shot on the lead doe due to something being off on my crossbow scope that I must have bumped crawling around the plains. On day 5 I located a buck and doe bedded together and snuck within 75yds and had another miss that I couldn’t blame on an equipment failure.
On Day 6 we started at what had become my favorite glassing spot in our area. I called it the Glassy Knoll. There was a solo buck at about 900yds. He was browsing right off the side of the road. I used terrain to stay hidden and popped up a small hill which I expected him to be on the other side of. When I started inching my head over I saw he had moved further away and bedded about 100yds from the road tight against some sage and out of sight from the road overlooking a big drainage.
I sat on the tailgate of my truck as my buddy drove me past the buck’s location and he dropped me off where I was out of sight and then drove up the road to a high point to where they could watch the stalk. As we drove by, the buck was up. They never seem to bed for very long. I laid down in a prone position and loaded my crossbow and started army crawling closer to get eyes on him and he popped out at 75yds. I took a shot and missed but the buck didn’t spook hard, as he moved away, I reloaded and watched his direction of travel waiting for him to fall behind terrain so I could move in closer. He went about 400yds before falling into a small draw. I dropped into the head of the main draw that this draw fed into thinking he would work his way down into the main draw where I would be waiting.
When I got to where the two draws met, I waited a few minutes and realized he wasn’t coming so I popped up on the top side of the draw to try to relocate him. I didn’t see him anywhere and figured he must have bedded back down at the top of the draw so I started crawling and glassing my way uphill. There was tall sage brush I wanted to set up next to and when I was about 5yds away from the brush, he stood up and was looking right at me. One of the other things we learned earlier in the week was that they had a tough time picking you out in a ghillie suit, which I was wearing, which gave me enough time to range him at 73yds and take another shot. As he ran blood was pouring onto his legs and I knew it was a good hit. With a sliced aorta, he ran 300yds and died.
The blood trail was like someone poured red paint across the ground. The only thing I can figure as to how he ran so far while losing so much blood was just the speed at which he took off after being shot.
My buddies got to watch the whole thing which was really cool. I have so much respect for these animals now. Their ability to see movement from such long distances is incredible.
