charliebravo77
Well-known member
11 years ago I met a stranger from the internet at the end of a dirt road outside Kankakee, Illinois to try hunting for the first real time - enter Kurt. We both had shotguns, it was 4AM in the relative middle of nowhere, what could go wrong? I had wandered around in the woods with a .22 looking for squirrels once before, but this was the first time I'd be going with someone who, presumably, knew what they were doing. Despite being unable to pull borrowed waders much past my knees, being ill-equipped for the elements and only getting one or two missed opportunities at taking a shot at ducks I was hooked.
Since then we've hunted whitetail, turkeys, ducks, squirrels, mule deer and elk across the country in a mentor-mentee relationship that predates formal R3 initiatives, or at least before we were aware of them. It's been an eye-opening experience getting first hand experience in a pursuit that I had no immediate or really even distant family members to learn from.
Sitting in that duck blind the very first time meeting we talked about all sorts of game to pursue, one in particular being Antilocapra americana. Whether known by the American antelope, speed goat or pronghorn, this critter embodies the American West. It is so uniquely North American that not only is it the only species of its kind that made it out of the Pleistocene but its closest living relatives are very distant cousins the Giraffe. Since the extinction of the American cave lion, the adult pronghorn lacks any significant predators aside from humans as they are the fastest land animal on the continent topping 55 miles per hour, though cougars, wolves, coyotes, grizzlies, golden eagles and bobcats will prey on them (particularly fawns) when they can catch them. Nothing will send chills down your spine like a bugling bull elk, but the pronghorn is the welcome wagon of the west, likely being the first critter you see traveling into the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and sagebrush flats west of the Mississippi.
Our first trip west was in 2014 where we hunted pronghorn in northeast Wyoming in what is ostensibly a pretty undesirable unit. However, there are pronghorn probably in almost every square mile of Wyoming that is below 9,000 feet and we hiked our asses off while filling a buck and doe tag each. We instantly knew we'd be returning to the west as often as we could.
Since then, we've been building points while hunting a few other times in Wyoming on 2nd choice or leftover tags for pronghorn. Earlier this year we decided to swing for the fences and put in for what should be (and was) a guaranteed draw on a good unit on the edges of the Red Desert. We couldn't get a true Red Desert tag, which are some of the most desirable, due to perpetually being a point or two behind in the draw. Preference points are worthless if you never use them, so we did. We took a friend of Kurt's one year, I took my cousin once and in 2020 he and I took a mutual friend but this year our group application included my mentor's mentor, Kurt's dad.
The three of us booked our flights, an Airbnb and rental Jeep and met at Denver International Airport last Wednesday night.
Right off the bat we had a brief hiccup with Enterprise, first a 4 door Wrangler that wouldn't start then a substituted soft top Wrangler that was just not going to be a great choice for our trip, they offered a Jeep Gladiator that we gladly accepted. Later it would be dubbed the Goat Wagon. We drove to Longmont, Colorado and grabbed a hotel for the night. The next morning we continued north to our destination outside Rawlins in south central Wyoming.
With far more experience, better gear and a well researched game plan we set out to scout the afternoon and evening once we dumped our gear at the Airbnb cabin.
Since then we've hunted whitetail, turkeys, ducks, squirrels, mule deer and elk across the country in a mentor-mentee relationship that predates formal R3 initiatives, or at least before we were aware of them. It's been an eye-opening experience getting first hand experience in a pursuit that I had no immediate or really even distant family members to learn from.
Sitting in that duck blind the very first time meeting we talked about all sorts of game to pursue, one in particular being Antilocapra americana. Whether known by the American antelope, speed goat or pronghorn, this critter embodies the American West. It is so uniquely North American that not only is it the only species of its kind that made it out of the Pleistocene but its closest living relatives are very distant cousins the Giraffe. Since the extinction of the American cave lion, the adult pronghorn lacks any significant predators aside from humans as they are the fastest land animal on the continent topping 55 miles per hour, though cougars, wolves, coyotes, grizzlies, golden eagles and bobcats will prey on them (particularly fawns) when they can catch them. Nothing will send chills down your spine like a bugling bull elk, but the pronghorn is the welcome wagon of the west, likely being the first critter you see traveling into the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and sagebrush flats west of the Mississippi.
Our first trip west was in 2014 where we hunted pronghorn in northeast Wyoming in what is ostensibly a pretty undesirable unit. However, there are pronghorn probably in almost every square mile of Wyoming that is below 9,000 feet and we hiked our asses off while filling a buck and doe tag each. We instantly knew we'd be returning to the west as often as we could.
Since then, we've been building points while hunting a few other times in Wyoming on 2nd choice or leftover tags for pronghorn. Earlier this year we decided to swing for the fences and put in for what should be (and was) a guaranteed draw on a good unit on the edges of the Red Desert. We couldn't get a true Red Desert tag, which are some of the most desirable, due to perpetually being a point or two behind in the draw. Preference points are worthless if you never use them, so we did. We took a friend of Kurt's one year, I took my cousin once and in 2020 he and I took a mutual friend but this year our group application included my mentor's mentor, Kurt's dad.
The three of us booked our flights, an Airbnb and rental Jeep and met at Denver International Airport last Wednesday night.
Right off the bat we had a brief hiccup with Enterprise, first a 4 door Wrangler that wouldn't start then a substituted soft top Wrangler that was just not going to be a great choice for our trip, they offered a Jeep Gladiator that we gladly accepted. Later it would be dubbed the Goat Wagon. We drove to Longmont, Colorado and grabbed a hotel for the night. The next morning we continued north to our destination outside Rawlins in south central Wyoming.
With far more experience, better gear and a well researched game plan we set out to scout the afternoon and evening once we dumped our gear at the Airbnb cabin.
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