Well, we arrived back in Iowa Thursday after our first pronghorn hunt, and man did we have a good time! We were hunting eastern WY in a 100% 0 PP* unit. We arrived Saturday AM to scout. We saw a fair amount of goats on the limited public. As we scouted the unit and the day went on so did the number of other hunters. By the end of the day there were trucks everywhere, and we were getting nervous.
Opening morning we took Randy's advice. We had located a good buck the day prior on BLM and when the sun came up we were sitting 150 yards from his bed. Unfortunately in the night him and his does had crossed the fence onto private. There he sat at 146 yards, approx 1 yard into private. It was spitting and raining on us but we stuck it out. Eventually some road hunters scared them further into the private and we picked up to push onto the next piece. Once we picked up we saw a small herd of does approaching about 500 yards out. We started moving towards them and made it about to 300 when someone close took a shot at something and sent them running. At about 200 yards they stopped to look back and I took a doe. They ran another 40 yards and my hunting partner took another doe. Hour and a half in and we had the doe tags filled, not what we expected but it's what we settled for. We got those quartered out and on ice pretty quick and went along our way.
The next few hours were pretty rough, the BLM pieces we had scouted the day before we're seas of orange. We spent a few hours walking knolls, but couldn't find any more bucks. At about 3:30 we decided to head into a long strip of blm that led to a much larger piece of blm and see if we couldn't drum up some action. Gps said it was 4 miles back to where we wanted to go. Being an Iowa boy I said no sweat and we were off. About an hour into the hike I picked up a heard 2 miles away, and our stalk began. We flipped s coin on who would get the crack at the buck if there was one and my partner won. We stalked for an hour and ended up 225 yards from 8 bucks and 6 does. There was one good buck (good to this first timer) (13") and a few respectible bucks(11"). My partner settled for the big buck and I was happy with the next largest. Two rifle shots one after another and we had two goats on the ground! Tagged out on day one! We hurried down to them, snapped some pictures had them capped and quartered and were on our way. It started raining again and we packed those goats out 3.5 miles in the dark and rain. We were dead afterwords but thankful for the heavy pack out. Its safe to say we were hooked. We spent the next day processing, fishing and scouting for adventures to come. Next year we'll buy more tags and maybe try our hand at mulies. Hopefully end up with a unit with larger selection where we can be more picky! Till next year WY!
Opening morning we took Randy's advice. We had located a good buck the day prior on BLM and when the sun came up we were sitting 150 yards from his bed. Unfortunately in the night him and his does had crossed the fence onto private. There he sat at 146 yards, approx 1 yard into private. It was spitting and raining on us but we stuck it out. Eventually some road hunters scared them further into the private and we picked up to push onto the next piece. Once we picked up we saw a small herd of does approaching about 500 yards out. We started moving towards them and made it about to 300 when someone close took a shot at something and sent them running. At about 200 yards they stopped to look back and I took a doe. They ran another 40 yards and my hunting partner took another doe. Hour and a half in and we had the doe tags filled, not what we expected but it's what we settled for. We got those quartered out and on ice pretty quick and went along our way.
The next few hours were pretty rough, the BLM pieces we had scouted the day before we're seas of orange. We spent a few hours walking knolls, but couldn't find any more bucks. At about 3:30 we decided to head into a long strip of blm that led to a much larger piece of blm and see if we couldn't drum up some action. Gps said it was 4 miles back to where we wanted to go. Being an Iowa boy I said no sweat and we were off. About an hour into the hike I picked up a heard 2 miles away, and our stalk began. We flipped s coin on who would get the crack at the buck if there was one and my partner won. We stalked for an hour and ended up 225 yards from 8 bucks and 6 does. There was one good buck (good to this first timer) (13") and a few respectible bucks(11"). My partner settled for the big buck and I was happy with the next largest. Two rifle shots one after another and we had two goats on the ground! Tagged out on day one! We hurried down to them, snapped some pictures had them capped and quartered and were on our way. It started raining again and we packed those goats out 3.5 miles in the dark and rain. We were dead afterwords but thankful for the heavy pack out. Its safe to say we were hooked. We spent the next day processing, fishing and scouting for adventures to come. Next year we'll buy more tags and maybe try our hand at mulies. Hopefully end up with a unit with larger selection where we can be more picky! Till next year WY!
