Quest For A First Antelope

[Trayball20]

My youngest son turned 12 this year. He has been able to hunt our farm land in Nebraska the past couple of years and last year when we went out to hunt he was given his first hunting rifle which is a Remington Model 700 long range 7mm.
His new hunting rifle.

 

[Trayball20]

Over the Winter him and I worked on getting a load that would shoot well out of his new rifle.
Helping reload


After a few attempts we settled on a load that shot 140 grain Nosler Ballistic tips well.


Once we got it sighted in we had to find out how fast we were shooting so we could get the CDS dial for his scope.

 

[Nick87]

Following! Hold on tight to that gun kid!

 

[Trayball20]

After the draw results came out it was time to start scouting. During our scouting trips he learned how use a spotting scope. I left it completely up to him on what he liked. In the last spot we check on our first scouting trip he said, "Dad that one looks really big." I took a look and said that is the best one we have seen.
A few pictures of the buck that got him excited.


We made a total of 5 scouting trips always finding this buck first then going to see if we could find anything else that would get him excited. All summer he had been by himself then 3 weeks before season he had 9 does with him, which made him so much easier to find. Then 1 week before season he was by himself again.
This is how almost every scouting trip ended.