First time to the Pizza Barn

[tteel]

I am anxiously awaiting the morning as my wife and I head to NE WY for our first Antelope hunt. This is her first western big game adventure, and I am tired of OTC Colorado archery elk tag soup. After research on gohunt, onx, and forum threads we settled a unit close to the Pizza Barn to enjoy some prime rib. We drew on our second choice with the non resident special option since we wanted to save our points for a trophy unit in the future. The access looks fair and hunter success seems average (80% seems pretty damn good to me). Through research and a few calls I did secure some private land as a back up later in the week. I schedule 9 days off work with 6 days of hunting to give us the best odds possible. I have never been more comfortable shooting 400 yards in my life, but with practice its nothing banging a gong from the prone positive in easy 1 moa groups. I have ballistics calculated for our rifles and ready to let them fly. I was slightly disappointed to hear of the late spring weather conditions and it has increased my anxiety as I wanted her to have a great experience like you read about on these forum post of multiple stalks per day and glassing a 100 bucks per day. Im not going to let it get me down though and stay positive. The CO officer was reassuring they did have some winterkill but not as bad many say. I am looking forward to getting boots on the ground and breaking the ice of blowing a herd of goats out of the country. I will give a full detailed report when we return hopefully with meat in the cooler.

 

[cahunter805]

Awesome!! Good luck on the hunt. The pizza barn is such a fun place. You will enjoy it and the scenery around the area is amazing as well.

 

[KipCarson]

Good luck, looking forward to a good story

 

[SticksMcKinley]

Good luck!

 

[NEWHunter]

I’ve heard about the Legend of the Newcastle Pizza Barn around here for years and have always wondered if its true. Forget about pronghorn photos, I’d like to see some prime rib pics.

Good luck and I do hope you have some pronghorn photos to post.

 

[LCH]

Sounds like you're off to a good start!

 

[cmoore83]

I ate at the pizza barn earlier this week, as I too have heard the stories about the place. Let me just say, it is really good, I got the 16 oz prime rib, and it doesn’t disappoint. Killed a pretty good deer while I was out there as well, talked to some other hunters at the tables near mine and pretty much everybody was seeing goats. Have fun!

 

[NEWHunter]

I ate at the pizza barn earlier this week, as I too have heard the stories about the place. Let me just say, it is really good, I got the 16 oz prime rib, and it doesn’t disappoint. Killed a pretty good deer while I was out there as well, talked to some other hunters at the tables near mine and pretty much everybody was seeing goats. Have fun!

Pictures or it didn’t happen

 

[cmoore83]

Here’s mine and my buddies, we’re from Indiana so these were pretty nice deer for our first mule deer. Mines on the right.

 

[tteel]

I will try my best to do a day by day write up of the events that took place during my rifle hunt. This is my first write up and probably the most I have written since college so take it easy on me. I will try to be as honest as possible for future hunters looking to do a DIY antelope hunt and respectful to people who hunt the area yearly as I would not want a ton of internet info out on the forums.

Day 1: Departure
We left OKC at approx 1:30 pm after finishing some grocery shopping and dropping off the dog at the in laws. I originally planned to drive all the way through to our final destination for a total of 14 hours and 45 min, but why rush things along. We decided to stop in Scottsbluff, NE for the night and finish the drive in the morning with rested eyes for the glassing to come.

 

[Summitthunting]

I drove through Newcastle two weeks ago and didn’t stop. I fell like I let Cushman down.

 

[tteel]

Day 2:

After quickly getting our gear settled in at the Auto Inn we hit the road to find some goats. I quickly found out antelope are extremely visible, but they have an ability to put themselves in places just out of reach. We scouted several areas and took notes of different groups. We found a section of state land that was loaded with antelope but they liked to stay in the creek bottom with knee to thigh high sage and the closest terrain feature approximately 700 yards away. We finished the day and took inventory of the area and ended up finding a smoker buck that we would end up spending several days chasing. He had a group of 19 does and was very aggressive towards other bucks. The country is not flat by any means but has a gentle roll. I was expecting to find more sage to use as cover but the prairie was mostly covered in short grass and CACTUS! The rolling type hills made it difficult to keep from skylining yourself.

 

[tteel]

 

[tteel]

Got it done on the second full day of hunting. These things are incredibly hard to field judge, even with a spotting scope. I took him at 336 yards after we bumped him out of his bed. He simply ran over a rolling hill and wouldn’t cross the road. A short sneak to the top of the hill and game over. It’s also difficult to judge distance in such bare ground.

 

[tteel]

 

[Sawtooth]

Congratulations on two nice bucks. Now lets see some pictures of that 16 oz. prime rib. It is almost lunch time.

 

[tteel]

Congratulations on two nice bucks. Now lets see some pictures of that 16 oz. prime rib. It is almost lunch time.

Well unfortunately the prime rib escaped me. We stopped by on a Wed night and they only serve the prime rib on Friday and Saturday. So we let cushman down. I swear I saw a sign for cushman property close to mule creek jct. We were able to snag some beers at Lost cabin brewery in Rapid City and Spearfish brewery in Spearfish along with some wild brown trout.

 

[Flatrock]

I'll help you guys out on the prime rib part!

 

[Dl1969]

Went on Friday night around 7 and they were sold out

 

[SaskHunter]

I hunted antelope unit 7 last week, managed to get a decent buck right after the storm but had to move on to a different unit to fill other tags. The Pizza Barn was on my list but the weather turned to shyte so it wasn't worth taking the trip from Wright...