thecrittergitter
Well-known member
Man my taxidermy bill is getting out of control this year
Well, this was one of the trips I'll never forget. My first antelope hunt with my two boys! My good buddy Brian Broyels and I headed out to eastern Montana with Braden and Dustin to see if we could put the hammer on a nice speed goat. And even though I knew it would be great, it went even better than planned
We started off early Saturday morning and jumped on the wheelers to head out to a drainage a few miles out. We weren't even 15 minutes out and Braden, my oldest son, spotted some lopes about 400 yards out. Kid is gonna be a force to reckon with when he gets a weapon in hand!
We jumped off to take a look but nothing too special in the first group for good bucks. However, game faces were on and ready to find something better
So we packed up and headed out a few more miles to get up to a good glassing spot. Right away we noticed a couple groups of lopes across the canyon. I was really hoping for a 75+ inch goat or better if possible and with only 1 day, knew it might be a tough one to pull off. Course with the way my year has shaken out so far, I guess anything is possibleLOL
We decided the ones across the canyon didn't have any shooters in there so we packed up and headed a little farther out. The boys were loving the heck out of the hunting but were having as much fun riding the wheelers when they could too
Finally we got to another spot where we could overlook a little creek bottom that Brian said usually holds a bunch of lopes. Right away we spotted a group of bucks and got the spotter set up. I got it set up and found there was a dandy in the group, one I was thinking would be the one to get my tag attached to it. However, glassing off to the south, I glassed up another buck bedded out there. It was very apparent that this was a really cool looking buck as he was bedded facing away, I could see his prongs were long and really flared out. So this buck earned the name "Flare"........The boys wanted to study up on flare and the others so they could tell me which one I should shoot LOL
Braden decided right away that he liked Flare the best but I was having a hard time telling if he was actually as good as the big guy in the group of 8.
Since it was only about 11 am, we decided we would head to a couple other drainages and look them over and come back to this spot later in the day and if I hadn't found a better one by then, we would take a crack at Flare or the Big Fella in the group of bucks. After another hour or so of no lopes in sight, we took a little lunch break...
After a little lunch break we figured we better head out and find us a loper!
We packed up, played around on the wheeler a bit and headed back where we saw the lopers in the morning. When we got back to the spot we had seen Flare and the other bucks, we spotted a huge hillside we couldn't see before and there were lopers all over it. We started glassing them up and found all the bucks from before............except Flare. I really wanted to take a closer look at him so I again passed on an opportunity to shoot the Big Guy with the group of 8.
The Big Guy was getting more tempting, the longer I looked at him, he is the center buck in the last picture...... After about another hour of searching, we finally found Flare again. And although I think that the big guy was a slightly better buck score wise, my boys were really liking ol Flare and wanted to try for him instead.
Well, this was one of the trips I'll never forget. My first antelope hunt with my two boys! My good buddy Brian Broyels and I headed out to eastern Montana with Braden and Dustin to see if we could put the hammer on a nice speed goat. And even though I knew it would be great, it went even better than planned
We started off early Saturday morning and jumped on the wheelers to head out to a drainage a few miles out. We weren't even 15 minutes out and Braden, my oldest son, spotted some lopes about 400 yards out. Kid is gonna be a force to reckon with when he gets a weapon in hand!
We jumped off to take a look but nothing too special in the first group for good bucks. However, game faces were on and ready to find something better
So we packed up and headed out a few more miles to get up to a good glassing spot. Right away we noticed a couple groups of lopes across the canyon. I was really hoping for a 75+ inch goat or better if possible and with only 1 day, knew it might be a tough one to pull off. Course with the way my year has shaken out so far, I guess anything is possible
LOL We decided the ones across the canyon didn't have any shooters in there so we packed up and headed a little farther out. The boys were loving the heck out of the hunting but were having as much fun riding the wheelers when they could too
Finally we got to another spot where we could overlook a little creek bottom that Brian said usually holds a bunch of lopes. Right away we spotted a group of bucks and got the spotter set up. I got it set up and found there was a dandy in the group, one I was thinking would be the one to get my tag attached to it. However, glassing off to the south, I glassed up another buck bedded out there. It was very apparent that this was a really cool looking buck as he was bedded facing away, I could see his prongs were long and really flared out. So this buck earned the name "Flare"........The boys wanted to study up on flare and the others so they could tell me which one I should shoot
LOLBraden decided right away that he liked Flare the best but I was having a hard time telling if he was actually as good as the big guy in the group of 8.
Since it was only about 11 am, we decided we would head to a couple other drainages and look them over and come back to this spot later in the day and if I hadn't found a better one by then, we would take a crack at Flare or the Big Fella in the group of bucks. After another hour or so of no lopes in sight, we took a little lunch break...
After a little lunch break we figured we better head out and find us a loper!
We packed up, played around on the wheeler a bit and headed back where we saw the lopers in the morning. When we got back to the spot we had seen Flare and the other bucks, we spotted a huge hillside we couldn't see before and there were lopers all over it. We started glassing them up and found all the bucks from before............except Flare. I really wanted to take a closer look at him so I again passed on an opportunity to shoot the Big Guy with the group of 8.
The Big Guy was getting more tempting, the longer I looked at him, he is the center buck in the last picture...... After about another hour of searching, we finally found Flare again. And although I think that the big guy was a slightly better buck score wise, my boys were really liking ol Flare and wanted to try for him instead.
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