huntinsonovagun
Active member
Way back in college, sometime around 2005-2006, I promised myself that I would head to Wyoming to hunt antelope when I graduate. I can’t say where or why the desire arose, but that was when the thought was planted in my mind. Well, I met a girl, we married, money was tight, we started a life, built a house, kids came along, etc. Fast-forward to a couple/few years ago and I decided that I have to prioritize this thing if I want it. I, like everyone else, didn’t know where to start, so I started buying points and applying. I started researching dang near every unit and this year changed my strategy to just getting a tag in a unit with decent access with the points I had- not at all looking into “top-tier” units, which allowed me draw my #1 choice this year. Yeah, I burned my points on an apparent “sub-par” unit, but I was finally headed to Wyoming. Better late than never, right?
I spent hours reading about the history of the HMA I was to be hunting, I read about Charles Beldon and his influences and photography, I read about pronghorn and their tendencies and physiology- they’re pretty special creatures. I spent some time thinking about the potential buck I may shoot- what is he doing, where does he live, how would it “all go down”? Strange thoughts, I know, but my mind was already traveling ahead of my physical self.
Let’s back up a little to this past Spring—My wife’s absolute favorite thing to do in the world is travel...Covid obviously put a halt to that, so with our “stimulus check” and a few bucks of our own, we paid cash for a used 23’ camper and spent a good number of hours remodeling the inside and getting everything up to snuff on it. We took it on a few short local trips to work out any kinks, but it seemed solid from what we could tell. By the time I knew of my drawn tag, we decided to take the RV and make a big family trip out of this. We slated 12-14 days to make the trip and set out. We camped on NF, BLM, even a few truck stops on travel days. We saw the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, a little wildlife and some really cool country! The coolest part, to me, was that we could stay in these wild places in our own little spot without a bunch of other people in our hip pocket. I personally have mixed thoughts about the national parks for this very reason, but I digress. We tried to plan where we would stay in advance, but part of the adventure was not knowing exactly where we were going to sleep. I think we ended up staying in something like 9 different sites over the course of our trip.
I spent hours reading about the history of the HMA I was to be hunting, I read about Charles Beldon and his influences and photography, I read about pronghorn and their tendencies and physiology- they’re pretty special creatures. I spent some time thinking about the potential buck I may shoot- what is he doing, where does he live, how would it “all go down”? Strange thoughts, I know, but my mind was already traveling ahead of my physical self.
Let’s back up a little to this past Spring—My wife’s absolute favorite thing to do in the world is travel...Covid obviously put a halt to that, so with our “stimulus check” and a few bucks of our own, we paid cash for a used 23’ camper and spent a good number of hours remodeling the inside and getting everything up to snuff on it. We took it on a few short local trips to work out any kinks, but it seemed solid from what we could tell. By the time I knew of my drawn tag, we decided to take the RV and make a big family trip out of this. We slated 12-14 days to make the trip and set out. We camped on NF, BLM, even a few truck stops on travel days. We saw the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, a little wildlife and some really cool country! The coolest part, to me, was that we could stay in these wild places in our own little spot without a bunch of other people in our hip pocket. I personally have mixed thoughts about the national parks for this very reason, but I digress. We tried to plan where we would stay in advance, but part of the adventure was not knowing exactly where we were going to sleep. I think we ended up staying in something like 9 different sites over the course of our trip.
