after several attempts on opening day resulting in some successful stalks ending with no shots taken, we had 4 opportunities at various bucks without success. second day with one more missed opportunity, my girlfriend said "you take the next shot opportunity." thinking if I had taken some of those previous shots we would have been successful already.
so we got to the walk-in area and started out and went and sat in an area that funneled the antelope that were running from others, just as I was about to fill 1 of my doe tags, some guy just starts blasting at 'em from about 700 yards away, so I stood up not wanting to get shot and the does saw me and hauled butt outta there. the guy hauled butt too.
we decided to head back for a mid day siesta and when we got back to last hill overlooking the road I spot a group of 6 lopes about 1/2 mile out but right next to the dirt road we are parked on. I put the binos on 'em and can see 1 is a buck. not huge but a buck, at this point I am getting worried about how much longer we have here and going home to have tag soup so I decide to try for him and go down the road until I get within 300 yards of them and leave the road and crawl to within 200 yards and let one fly, my 270 with 130 TTSX Barnes went through from chest frontal to exit the flank and re-enter the hind quarter and re-exit the rump and fly off across the prairie. he dropped where he stood about 40 feet from the road and my girlfriend drives down and we get him ready to take back to the camp for skinning and cutting.
it was hot yesterday before it snowed so I had taken off my camo for lighter clothes already when we got him. when I saw what others had taken in this area I don't feel bad about how small/big it is. we knew this wasn't a "killer" area for big 1s anyway, but came to learn some about hunting them, have fun and maybe take 1 or 2, didn't know about walking 4-6 miles daily
some of the bigger 1s we have seen are on private "no hunting" property.
anyway here is my 1st of what I hope to be many over the years for antelope. maybe in a few years we can draw a "killer" area and chase down a BOONER!
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P.S. my kids were in a wreck in our hunting rig about 4 days before we were scheduled to leave so we came down in my car thinking if we needed we could rent a wreck or a U-Haul pickup but since we were in a walk-in area anyway we just used my car and bought a tarp for the trunk and it worked out, but the looks we get from others for our choice of "hunting rig"
at that point we had too much invested and had already turned in our vacation requests so couldn't just not go.
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