Dougfirtree
Well-known member
Well, I’m stuck around the house quite a bit these days, so I thought I would write up a brief story about our hunt in Wyoming this year. Sorry if it’s a tad long.
I went with my 12 year old son and an old friend. My son had only been hunting for a year and had yet to kill anything. He’s also not spent much time out west, so I figured this would be a really fun way for us to connect, for him to get in some hunting where he can see critters (not easy at home). The plan was for him to get an elk tag and for both of us to get doe antelope tags.
Things took a tough start. We drew our backup elk tag, in a unit with lots of private land and some access issues. And, even worse, I confused some dates and missed the antelope draw, so we were down to just leftovers, where we also drew the backup, a private land only doe tag in unit 23. Oof. So far, my track record as hunting dad was not looking so great…
I began a massive letter writing campaign to just about every landowner in unit 23, trying to find a spot to hunt antelope. Fortune smiled on us and one guy wrote back to say that he thought it was “cool as heck” that I was taking my son hunting and we were welcome to hunt his 1000 acre parcel. Phew!
As it would happen, our early October hunt happened to coincide with record cold temps, snow and wind. The opening day of elk season was fairly nice and we covered a lot of ground, both on foot and with glass, but saw zero elk. But after that, we were hunting in temps that were pretty brutal. It felt like January. Several days of hunting and glassing turned up no sightings, which was discouraging, given how open the unit was. On the third day, as we came down the mountain, we ran smack into a group of 3 beautiful bulls. They paraded past us within rifle range, stopping broadside every so often to rub in the fact that he only had a cow tag. Still, it as awesome to see them and I think my son was pretty blown away with how big and beautiful they were. We were getting the feeling that the big herds of cows were just not in the unit at the moment.
So we switched gears and headed to antelope country. We saw surprisingly few driving to our spot, which was alarming, but thankfully, when we arrived at the parcel we could hunt, there was a nice group of does and bucks hanging out at a watering hole. We tried to stalk in one direction, but ran out of cover at about 700 yards. So we made a huge swing around to the other side of them, crested a hill and ran out of cover again at about 800 yards… There was a fence running down towards them, so we decided to just belly crawl along the cow path that ran along the fence and hope for the best. Thus began the longest belly crawl I’ve ever done, maybe 500 yards in total, but much of it done agonizingly slowly, under the watchful eyes of the pronghorn, who thankfully didn’t spook. To make matters worse, I couldn’t get my range finder to range them. I think I had scratched the glass on it and it was acting up. Finally, I was able to get it to range a patch of dirt near them and we were within 250 yards of a group that seemed like they’d had enough of us and were thinking about bolting. 250 is my son’s max range, but he was eager and confident. The wind was minimal and he had a good rest on the bipod. I told him to take the shot if he felt ready. At the shot, the doe hit the ground like a brick. The rest of the herd bolted a short ways and stopped. He handed the rifle over to me and I was able to drop another doe from the same group. We were pretty psyched! It was really cool being with him for his first kill and he was pretty proud, especially as we’d worked really hard for these antelope. He helped me field dress them and we dragged one out to the road (much farther than it looked)! I called the owner and let him know and he graciously allowed us to drive in to grab the other prongalope. This is precisely when I realize that the key to the truck was no longer in my pocket and that it was getting dark and colder and we were in the middle of nowhere. I may have cursed once or twice. Nothing to do though, but retrace our steps as fast as possible and find that key. We were practically jogging along our route, my son bordering on scared and me feeling like the biggest idiot in Wyoming. Thankfully, we found the key where we suspected we might, along the fence. As I’d belly crawled, a sage bush had grabbed it out of my pocket. It was late by the time we drove into Casper and we grabbed a hotel room instead of going back to our elk camp.
We hunted elk most of the next day, but didn’t see a single cow. We did see two bulls and even watched them bed down in a small patch of woods about a mile away. It seemed we were in the bachelor pad, not the ladies zone of this mountain range.
We were running out of time to get an elk and have it processed before leaving and my son was running low on hope of seeing any cows. So, we decided to spend our last day doing something different. We cruised over to the Wind Rivers and found a nice (and only partially frozen) trout stream and I gave the boy his first lessons in fly fishing. He did pretty well and the brookies were obliging. He caught 4 and had a blast!
Not everything went as planned and it was a challenging hunt in many ways, but we had a lot of fun and it was pretty special to be with my oldest son for his first antelope (or anything else). I may have to do the same thing for my next son in a couple of year when he’s old enough. Hopefully it will be a little warmer!
I went with my 12 year old son and an old friend. My son had only been hunting for a year and had yet to kill anything. He’s also not spent much time out west, so I figured this would be a really fun way for us to connect, for him to get in some hunting where he can see critters (not easy at home). The plan was for him to get an elk tag and for both of us to get doe antelope tags.
Things took a tough start. We drew our backup elk tag, in a unit with lots of private land and some access issues. And, even worse, I confused some dates and missed the antelope draw, so we were down to just leftovers, where we also drew the backup, a private land only doe tag in unit 23. Oof. So far, my track record as hunting dad was not looking so great…
I began a massive letter writing campaign to just about every landowner in unit 23, trying to find a spot to hunt antelope. Fortune smiled on us and one guy wrote back to say that he thought it was “cool as heck” that I was taking my son hunting and we were welcome to hunt his 1000 acre parcel. Phew!
As it would happen, our early October hunt happened to coincide with record cold temps, snow and wind. The opening day of elk season was fairly nice and we covered a lot of ground, both on foot and with glass, but saw zero elk. But after that, we were hunting in temps that were pretty brutal. It felt like January. Several days of hunting and glassing turned up no sightings, which was discouraging, given how open the unit was. On the third day, as we came down the mountain, we ran smack into a group of 3 beautiful bulls. They paraded past us within rifle range, stopping broadside every so often to rub in the fact that he only had a cow tag. Still, it as awesome to see them and I think my son was pretty blown away with how big and beautiful they were. We were getting the feeling that the big herds of cows were just not in the unit at the moment.
So we switched gears and headed to antelope country. We saw surprisingly few driving to our spot, which was alarming, but thankfully, when we arrived at the parcel we could hunt, there was a nice group of does and bucks hanging out at a watering hole. We tried to stalk in one direction, but ran out of cover at about 700 yards. So we made a huge swing around to the other side of them, crested a hill and ran out of cover again at about 800 yards… There was a fence running down towards them, so we decided to just belly crawl along the cow path that ran along the fence and hope for the best. Thus began the longest belly crawl I’ve ever done, maybe 500 yards in total, but much of it done agonizingly slowly, under the watchful eyes of the pronghorn, who thankfully didn’t spook. To make matters worse, I couldn’t get my range finder to range them. I think I had scratched the glass on it and it was acting up. Finally, I was able to get it to range a patch of dirt near them and we were within 250 yards of a group that seemed like they’d had enough of us and were thinking about bolting. 250 is my son’s max range, but he was eager and confident. The wind was minimal and he had a good rest on the bipod. I told him to take the shot if he felt ready. At the shot, the doe hit the ground like a brick. The rest of the herd bolted a short ways and stopped. He handed the rifle over to me and I was able to drop another doe from the same group. We were pretty psyched! It was really cool being with him for his first kill and he was pretty proud, especially as we’d worked really hard for these antelope. He helped me field dress them and we dragged one out to the road (much farther than it looked)! I called the owner and let him know and he graciously allowed us to drive in to grab the other prongalope. This is precisely when I realize that the key to the truck was no longer in my pocket and that it was getting dark and colder and we were in the middle of nowhere. I may have cursed once or twice. Nothing to do though, but retrace our steps as fast as possible and find that key. We were practically jogging along our route, my son bordering on scared and me feeling like the biggest idiot in Wyoming. Thankfully, we found the key where we suspected we might, along the fence. As I’d belly crawled, a sage bush had grabbed it out of my pocket. It was late by the time we drove into Casper and we grabbed a hotel room instead of going back to our elk camp.
We hunted elk most of the next day, but didn’t see a single cow. We did see two bulls and even watched them bed down in a small patch of woods about a mile away. It seemed we were in the bachelor pad, not the ladies zone of this mountain range.
We were running out of time to get an elk and have it processed before leaving and my son was running low on hope of seeing any cows. So, we decided to spend our last day doing something different. We cruised over to the Wind Rivers and found a nice (and only partially frozen) trout stream and I gave the boy his first lessons in fly fishing. He did pretty well and the brookies were obliging. He caught 4 and had a blast!
Not everything went as planned and it was a challenging hunt in many ways, but we had a lot of fun and it was pretty special to be with my oldest son for his first antelope (or anything else). I may have to do the same thing for my next son in a couple of year when he’s old enough. Hopefully it will be a little warmer!
