Many know I finally burned all my Utah pronghorn points. I could have burned them sooner, but I wanted a party app with Matthew. Pronghorn hunting has been the core of our hunting times together since he was two.
1992 - Central Montana; our first of many pronghorn adventures.
I was willing to wait for our average to be high enough to draw the tag on a landscape I've always wanted to hunt. It was my 25th year of applying and his 15th year. It was worth every minute of it.
The title of this thread is a spoiler about this hunt. We have just started filming our 16th season. Never have I fired a shot that did not have cameras rolling. Often, I've passed shots as I waited for cameras to be rolling and focused.
Well, that streak was broken when excitement overtook me in Utah this last week. I was supposed to be the "herder" and bump this buck back to Matthew and the camera guy, Jace. The last words I heard from Matthew as I started on my three-mile loop was, "If you get a shot, you better kill that buck; camera or not." I just chuckled, knowing I would never do that.
We'll a couple hours later, with only a half hour of light left, this buck decided not to go towards Matthew, rather to snort and wheeze at me from a longer distance than I normally like to shoot. To cut the distance, I ran to the next ridge top, found it free of brush, and laid down my pack.
Unimpressed with me or due to his vision impaired by the low light conditions, the buck turned to horn the closest sagebrush. Hmm, what to do. I ranged and dialed. Still not a preferred comfort range, though I have a range target at this exact distance I usually nail 10 out of 10 times.
I laid down across the pack and cranked the scope to 15x; amazingly steady. I dry fired. Dang, that buck would have been dead with that shot. One more look through the binos at those long prongs and ivory tips.
Screw it. I love pronghorn bucks like this and the audience is gonna have to understand.
I chambered a live round. The buck stepped forward to the center of my scope view as I addressed the rifle, almost as if he was lining up the shot for me. I breathed. Heart was great. No wiggle. As I neared the bottom of my breathing cycle, I don't recall pulling the trigger.
The suppressed 7mm-08 barely made much noise. The suppressed recoil was not enough to even take the buck out of my sight picture. About the time he whirled and ran, I heard what seemed to be the sound of ribs being cracked by a 140 gain E-Tip.
He ran SW, over the lip of a coulee and out of sight. I stood to watch. Surely he'd come out the top or bottom of that coulee. Nope, no buck emerged.
I marked my location. I marked a rise that was immediately beyond where he was standing. Knowing the distance, I could find exactly where we was standing by following this straight line on my map the ranged distance of the shot.
I got there with even less light. I called Matthew and Jace and asked them to get here to help search this featureless expanse. They said they saw me lay down and figured I was shooting. They estimated they were about a mile off. I sent them a pin of where I thought the buck was standing so they could navigate toward me.
Following deep fresh tracks in soft dirt, I followed the path of his exit. I lost his track as he crossed some sunbaked hardpan. I started circling, hoping to find him before dark. I walked out each of the small fingers leading into this deep coulee.
On the fourth of those coulee fingers I looked down to my left. There was a white pile of fur. He'd not made it as far as I thought. A perfect shot, slightly quartering away, entering mid-chest on the driver's side and exiting on the opposite side shoulder.
The buck's prongs were the cause of his demise. I'd always wanted a buck with long prongs, though I know the audience might bust my chops for not getting that shot on film. Oh well, prongs it is.
If there was one thing that faked me out, it was his body size. I had an 85# black lab and I don't think this buck's body was too much bigger than that. On our way out Jace carried all the production gear, Matthew carried all of my gear and the head, leaving me with all of the meat. That was the easiest load of an entire buck pronghorn I've ever hauled.
It was the best buck we'd seen in two full days of scouting and a full day of hunting. It left Matthew with four days of hunting to fill his tag and me to be nothing more than a pest.
1992 - Central Montana; our first of many pronghorn adventures.
I was willing to wait for our average to be high enough to draw the tag on a landscape I've always wanted to hunt. It was my 25th year of applying and his 15th year. It was worth every minute of it.
The title of this thread is a spoiler about this hunt. We have just started filming our 16th season. Never have I fired a shot that did not have cameras rolling. Often, I've passed shots as I waited for cameras to be rolling and focused.
Well, that streak was broken when excitement overtook me in Utah this last week. I was supposed to be the "herder" and bump this buck back to Matthew and the camera guy, Jace. The last words I heard from Matthew as I started on my three-mile loop was, "If you get a shot, you better kill that buck; camera or not." I just chuckled, knowing I would never do that.
We'll a couple hours later, with only a half hour of light left, this buck decided not to go towards Matthew, rather to snort and wheeze at me from a longer distance than I normally like to shoot. To cut the distance, I ran to the next ridge top, found it free of brush, and laid down my pack.
Unimpressed with me or due to his vision impaired by the low light conditions, the buck turned to horn the closest sagebrush. Hmm, what to do. I ranged and dialed. Still not a preferred comfort range, though I have a range target at this exact distance I usually nail 10 out of 10 times.
I laid down across the pack and cranked the scope to 15x; amazingly steady. I dry fired. Dang, that buck would have been dead with that shot. One more look through the binos at those long prongs and ivory tips.
Screw it. I love pronghorn bucks like this and the audience is gonna have to understand.
I chambered a live round. The buck stepped forward to the center of my scope view as I addressed the rifle, almost as if he was lining up the shot for me. I breathed. Heart was great. No wiggle. As I neared the bottom of my breathing cycle, I don't recall pulling the trigger.
The suppressed 7mm-08 barely made much noise. The suppressed recoil was not enough to even take the buck out of my sight picture. About the time he whirled and ran, I heard what seemed to be the sound of ribs being cracked by a 140 gain E-Tip.
He ran SW, over the lip of a coulee and out of sight. I stood to watch. Surely he'd come out the top or bottom of that coulee. Nope, no buck emerged.
I marked my location. I marked a rise that was immediately beyond where he was standing. Knowing the distance, I could find exactly where we was standing by following this straight line on my map the ranged distance of the shot.
I got there with even less light. I called Matthew and Jace and asked them to get here to help search this featureless expanse. They said they saw me lay down and figured I was shooting. They estimated they were about a mile off. I sent them a pin of where I thought the buck was standing so they could navigate toward me.
Following deep fresh tracks in soft dirt, I followed the path of his exit. I lost his track as he crossed some sunbaked hardpan. I started circling, hoping to find him before dark. I walked out each of the small fingers leading into this deep coulee.
On the fourth of those coulee fingers I looked down to my left. There was a white pile of fur. He'd not made it as far as I thought. A perfect shot, slightly quartering away, entering mid-chest on the driver's side and exiting on the opposite side shoulder.
The buck's prongs were the cause of his demise. I'd always wanted a buck with long prongs, though I know the audience might bust my chops for not getting that shot on film. Oh well, prongs it is.
If there was one thing that faked me out, it was his body size. I had an 85# black lab and I don't think this buck's body was too much bigger than that. On our way out Jace carried all the production gear, Matthew carried all of my gear and the head, leaving me with all of the meat. That was the easiest load of an entire buck pronghorn I've ever hauled.
It was the best buck we'd seen in two full days of scouting and a full day of hunting. It left Matthew with four days of hunting to fill his tag and me to be nothing more than a pest.
