Headed to Wyoming tomorrow night
hound_hunter
9/28/06 7:27pm
Well pops decided tonight we're finally gonna use our pronghorn tags in wyoming! Season started september 16 in our unit (unit 65 btw) and lasts til october 22. oct 22 seems real late for a pronghorn hunt, doesnt it? anyone know why they run this late/long? anyways - since im all about sharin sotries n all now just thought i'd let everyone know, haha.. We got three tags - we do this hunt every year (not in the same region) and try to mostly just make a camping trip outa it and have some fun. as you can see we're far from opening weekend, never been for the opener and had good luck with never seeing other hunters too so its been real nice that way. I imagine we'll all take about 13" goats, course last year we got lucky with a 15" and a 17". Im not expectin that one bit, and regardless of size i just love bein out there in wyoming "hunting" these pronghorns. This was my first big game hunt as a kid and I hope to continue to go back there every year til the season I die, hopefully by then I have a family to pass this traditional hunt onto as well.
haha, well this is gettin drug on - but ill be reportin back come monday. good luck to everyone on this muzzy hunt goin on!
haha, well this is gettin drug on - but ill be reportin back come monday. good luck to everyone on this muzzy hunt goin on!
8,226
You have the perfect attitude for a lope hunt =D>
Have fun & be safe HH.
We got there late n dark friday night, had a badger run right in front of the rode while we drove around lost trying to find our annual "oasis" camping spot in the dark. I dont see a lot of badgers so I thought this was awesome! In fact last year I saw my first badger and it was right here on this same hunt, haha. Yesterday, our first day of hunting. We drove and hiked spotting buck after buck, there all about the same by 3rd weekend but I figured i'd play around a bit and time after time yanked my collar holding off the harvest for as long as I could, im in that stage where I just like to shoot shoot shoot though so it was hard for me. After seeing who knows how many goats we chose to go exploring some new parts of the area we'd never been to (in the mule deer section I talked about this part, where i saw a pretty good muley) and as we were just driving random roads tryin to get lost we lucked up on a decent herd of around 15 lopes. Picked out the buck, looked him over for a good long 7 minutes at very least. Now im amazed at this cause every other bunch spooks quickly at the first sign of us, just like a normal antelope would. but these guys didnt care at all. their about 250 yds. from where we popped out on the road and didnt even care we were there. I noticed right off he was a little better than what we've been seeing, a little more width. a little more lenght. and after looking him over for a while I realised he pronged a lot higher than most of the other ones and thats usaully a pretty good sign. He's not got much for mass but overall he was a pretty decent buck and being as he stood there saying "shoot me, im not scared" possibly mocking my shooting skills in his mind I decided to take a go at him. With the windy windy conditons I figured I'd try out my skill with a windy shot. I couldnt really plan out any way to make somewhat of a stalk on him from the road unfortunately (i like to do this when im not on "serious" hunts just for fun times and experience) but since this was a no go I just plopped down on my butt and shot off my knee from the road. doesnt make for much of a story and im a little ashamed to admit it, but thats just the way things happened this time. I tried for my first neck shot just to make it somewhat interesting, I succeded but not quite a perfect shot - accualy not too great of placement, i guess i know i cant trust myself in wind anymore though.. well he bled to death and fell over kickin about 40 yds. from where he stood when shot. I had a blast just bein out there again and cant wait to go back next year. It's fun to hunt speed goats just cause you always see so many and it gives you a chance to really practice how good a stalk you can really make. (btw, this morning before leaving I went on a big long hike around some unexplored country in the bottom of our area.. Found a huge herd and within who knows how many hours I made it to around 70 yds. The buck had some great mass. he curled back way far but started curling real early, made for an awesome look!! I put him at about the same length as mine, 15 1/2 although with that long curl he looked a lot bigger, just after time you could see how he curled a lot earlier than normal. If I could choose between the two it would be tough cause I like them to prong above the ears and this one I spotted pronged about a 1/4inch under the ear line.. either of them would be great trophies though and im very pleased with the one I got! I had a great time getting to watch both).
Sorry for all the pics but I guess I'll pay my respect to everyone for this trip though - there's me, my pops, and my little bro. - Now i'm a big softy and not included in these photos are two of my hound pups i let tag along, I had a GREAT time with them along with me. Regardless of the harvest of a good pronghorn, this trip was a complete success with the memories made and the knowledge learned for all of us.
AWESOME!!
Congrats! :thumb :thumb
mnmt
Hiker; After lookin back through the pics again I found out last years was just a 12 1/2" for me that other 15 was a dif. year (lookin at it now it was accualy my first goat i ever took), but pops did get his 17"er last year... His had decent mass but the reason I took the 12 1/2" goat I did is cause his mass was unreal to me. It's definately not all I hipe it up to be, haha. but mass is my all time favorite characteristic on any animal and I couldnt pass him up. got to practice some long range shooting with him too so that was great practice :) . The pic definately doesnt do my goat justice though unfortunately, he totals over 20 inches of mass per. side and I scored him at 71 6/8 (ive just been learning how to score so give or take an inch or two on that possibly, but i feel accurate with it) anyways, for a 12 inch goat to score 71 I was just as pumped when i walked up on that one as i was to see this guy from last weekend. Here's the pics though, again you cant really see the mass mine has in here, sorry bout that.
Oh, and just so you guys know - im by NO MEANS obsessed with scores at all, I couldnt care one bit about the numbers of a trophy, the only reason I relate things to scorebook numbers is cause ive just been trying to learn all that stuff lately and its an easy wasy to tell others the size of your game so they can relate. anyways, heres the pics from our last hunt, there scanned so the quality is lame. - Oh, I didn't take him after hours, took him just before sundown but the lights were out by the time we got the cameras out - again, not the best shot placement on him, I hit lungs and was aiming for heart - im still learning the long range game. enjoy
thanks all for your responses - sorry the pics arent showin up, they work for me but i dunno what the deal is - take care though and thanks again. keep it safe (more importantly fun) out there :thumb
thanks for the help - hope it worked