Wyoming 'lope shootout

tailchaser · 10-08-2002, 06:22 AM

Well I just got back from my antelope tag in Wyoming and to say the least it was a great time in the field. We ended up shooting three bucks in the first four hours of the season. Mine ended up being the biggest of the bunch at a little over 14 1/2".

The morning started out slow until the road hunters appeared. We got ourselves on a high point in the area and it turned out to be the right place. We had 'lopes running at us from every direction. Reminded me of duck hunting. My dad and I hit a buck almost at the same time so he tagged it, then another buck came by that was a little small for me and my buddy from wyoming gave it some lead poisoning.

My buck however was pretty neat. We had spotted a herd a couple of miles away and the only road to it winded way around the canyon. There were two other rigs parked on the road about half way there and when we passed by we waived as they were eating lunch in the rig. We got to where we wanted to go and when I was putting on my pack I noticed something in a canyon about 400 yards behind their vehicles. Got the bino's out and sure enough it was a great looking buck bedded by himself in a revine. So we drove back around and parked at the bottom of the canyon about 300 yards below these trucks. They kinda watched us put on our packs and start walking right behind them in a little dismay. It was only about a 400 yard stalk and as I finally poked my head over the last rise the buck was bedded around 180 yards away. I plopped out the steady sticks, put it behind the shoulder and whammo. But the buck just stood up??? He took a few more steps up the hill and I sent another bullet his direction and still no reaction from the .300 mag!!!! I couldn't believe it. I put in a 3rd shell and as he made it over the noll, click! I forgot to reload from the previous melee of shooting at a buck going 100 mph by us earlier. Then we got a glimpse of him on the knoll and he dropped. When we got there we could see bullet holes perfectly behind the shoulder. Man that's a tough animal. Anyhoo, I'll post some pics here probably tonight. Great hunt and easy draw. Gotta love wyoming.

ps when we were at the butchers I not only saw antelope there, but deer, elk, and moose going on at the same time. I could only dream of having those kind of options in our state. Only makes you wish our ODFW did more to give hunters better opportunities instead of these season's in the hot weather.

tc

tailchaser · 10-08-2002, 12:25 PM

Well I was thinking about a mount but this new law with oregon has made the prices go up considerably. We talked with a couple of taxidermists there in wyoming and it was running about 375-400 for an antelope, but the big problem was shipping was upwards of 2-300 bucks!! So that puts it in a range I could have my pending record bull mounted and I didn't like that too much so I opted to wait. I couldn't even take the horns home until I had someone boil and bleach the skull plate.

As of the tag numbers I did a lot of research on area's with high percentages of draws in wyoming. Conversly they had high numbers of private land also. So before I put in, I contacted 7-8 landowners and got permission from 3 of them to hunt by trading some lovely salmon and halibut in return. There are also some great access spots out there also that our ODFW should pay attention to. They pay the land owner to open up land to the public for walk-in only purposes. The land owner gets 15 bucks for every animal killed on his property by the public. Plus they give them a couple of bucks on top of that for how many acres they donate. Pretty good system. Anyhow, I learned a lot about the out of state process and how to draw tags over there.

tc

Fish Hunter · 10-08-2002, 11:45 PM

Sounds like a cool trip. I bet that would make a fine head mount. Are you planning to have a mount done? If so what kind of prices are you finding? I should have points for an OR antelope tag next year.

We'll see. I should have gone to WY years ago. Sounds like the WY tag #'s are up again. Last time I investigated it some of the better units were really hard to draw.