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Past Month's Moccasin Telegraph
October 2004
| 10/16/04 | Our antelope hunting this season came with more twists and surprise
developments than a John Grisham novel. Hunting pronghorn antelope is a favorite activity
of mine, and it's usually fairly casual in the physical exertion department, compared to
elk hunting and other pursuits that take place in more vertical environments. In fact,
friends of mine have compared it to shopping. This one turned more strenuous than most,
though, and like most hunts (our hunts, anyway) our mental state ranged from elation to
despair, and wound up somewhere about eight on a scale of ten, I'd say. My quest for a trophy Montana antelope has been ongoing for a few years now. I’ve shot dozens of speed goats, but for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained; never a really big one. Montana only produces a couple of B&C record book antelope a year, so I’m in good company, but anyway…. A couple weeks back, I scored an incredible diplomatic coup, and was granted exclusive access for my son and I to a huge ranch (150+ sections).  Now I’m not
saying exactly where, as the owners requested I not tell anybody. How did I accomplish
this little feat, you ask? Heh, heh…. Be serious! Let’s just say it involved
common sense and good manners, plus some fortuitous references. Best, no cash was
involved, although I think I’m going to send the owners a nice gift certificate or
something. I will tell you what doesn’t work, though….These folks own a number of ranches, and allow public hunting on several, although a couple are outfitted. You don’t go pounding on their door at dinnertime the day before the season and expect to get anywhere, though. A couple of years ago, they were entertaining opening this place up for hunting. The story I got from the ranch manager; they were moving cows, and the owner’s daughter was circling around a vehicle-impassible section with a truck and horse trailer. Now she’s a hand, but got distracted or something and dropped the trailer wheels off the side of a cattle guard, and was stuck tight. She unhitched and went looking for help, and the first people she  came on were two pickup-loads of hunters. Incredibly, they refused her
request, saying they were too busy hunting to trifle with such matters, & she was SOL
as far as they were concerned. A mind-boggling breach of etiquette, eh? Especially
considering she’s reportedly good-looking, single, and very wealthy. Anyway, that
ended public hunting before it started on that place, & the manager was amazed
I’d gotten permission.So, we were in fat city! And it did turn out to be an incredible experience. There’s places where you can get up on (what passes for) a high point in that country, and the hills faintly visible on the far horizon are still on the same ranch, and not even at the other end of it! And antelope… it’s polluted with ‘em. But.... It was the toughest antelope hunting I’ve ever done. Those goats were SO wild and spooky, it was uncanny. I mean, you’d come over a rise, and just barely be able to see these white  specks a mile or two out, and they’d
instantly be at a full run. Now there’s only a couple of people who are on that ranch
consistently, and I don’t want to make any sort of hasty conclusions, but it seems
pretty obvious to me that those antelope get shot at year-round. In fact, they probably
get shot at less during hunting season than other times of the year! Although we certainly
did our part to keep the ammunition companies in business…So we spent a lot of time crawling through the sagebrush, and are pretty much perforated with cactus spines. Out of hundreds, many hundreds of speed goats, I saw three that I wanted, and they were 15-16”, but real heavy with long prongs. One was unapproachable. I tried twice, & never got closer than about 600 yards. We put one of the others to bed, but by dawn the next day he’d apparently decamped for parts unknown. The third; I put an epic stalk on, only to miss at about 400 yards, with no way to get closer. A heartbreaker, that was…. It got to be kind of nerve-wracking, as we were passing on lots of bucks that we’d have ordinarily blasted in a heartbeat other places  we’ve hunted, and bigger ones than we wound up
shooting. But as time ran out, our standards came down and our ammo consumption surged!
Embarassingly so…. But as I keep mentioning, the darn things were awful difficult to
get up on, & not given to standing still. Besides, if you’ve never missed an
antelope, you haven’t shot at many of ‘em!So, my quest for a Booner antelope continues. Maybe next year.... |