Antílope

Since I did so well fishing, I thought I'd try my paw at hunting. I left a rainy Seattle behind for the vast, sunny expanses of Southern Wyoming. Eight hours from Salt Lake City, the spot we camped included 3 of the dozen or so trees in the whole county. We arrived in the dark amidst a thunderstorm, which cleared up as soon as we finished putting the, now drenched, tents up. Hordes of moths attacked us, attracted by the lights of the RV.

I awoke to a chilly, but sunny, expanse of ranch-land sprinkled with rock formations. A small river carved it's way through the stunted sage brush towards the Pathfinder Ranch, which was our first destination after breakfast. We piled into the pickup, licenses in hand, and wound our way through the quiet ranch compound. We finally found a building with two herding dogs barking madly outside and were able to get permission from a woman while her toddler peered curiously out the screen door. Antelope surrounded us on the drive over to another ranch, where we found another border collie, but no people - thus no signature. After lunch we decided that Joe, the 22-yrd-old from Philly should be the first to shoot, so he got the front seat. Talk about exciting! It seemed that every 5 minutes we were spotting another group of antelope. Some were close enough to take a shot at, others bounded off, not even panting as we clocked them at 50 mph. If we were worried about finding six bucks to fill our tags, we shouldn't have been. Almost every group had a buck - or three. We began searching for only those with antlers twice as big as their ears and soon enough Joe got one. His had funny little back horns, which the game warden had never seen, and ended up having the biggest rack of all the ones we got. On the way back to camp we encountered a buck a mere 183 yds from the road. Vern, who has been hunting antelope for 40 years and is usually the last to shoot, was the only one with a rifle (for coyotes) and decided he was good for one shot. Coming back to camp laden with two cleaned bucks after only a half-day of hunting seemed to be a good omen.

The next morning dawned as pleasant as the first, and soon enough Kelly was out shooting at antelope. After missing one shot, we spotted the antlers of another buck who thought he was out of sight nestled in the sagebrush. This guy had a little nub on his nose, which made him look very prehistoric. On the way back it was Sonya's turn, but she kept getting stuck with practically impossible running shots - so she let Kelly's dad shoot for awhile to rest her shoulder. Joe spotted some bucks down near an old corral - and once again we headed back to camp with two antelope. Thunderstorms threatened the evening sky, but blew through, so we hiked up to the top of the nearest "mountain" as the sun set.


The temperature dropped a bit in the night, and the next day was overcast all morning - which was good for the meat we had hanging under the three trees. Sonya had donned her lucky pants, which lived up to their name - leaving Norm the only one without an antelope as we headed back to camp. We spotted a herd with two huge bucks at a very inconvenient distance of over 500 yds with an equally obnoxious backstop of cows. Since we had spent most of the hunt searching with the truck, we decided to split up. Norm and Joe sat a the one large, lonely tree in the river valley while Jon and Kelly walked up the river and Vern and Sonya came around in the truck. Down in the riverbed it was hard to see much, but we spooked a group of cattle, which spooked a herd of antelope - right toward the tree where Norm and Joe were waiting. After an impressive 400+ yd shot, we feasted on fresh tuna steaks (from the East Coast).

Since we had our quota and needed to take care of the meat and the RV, we headed back to Salt Lake a couple days early - leaving more vacation for the next hunt! :)