Oregon Antelope hunt

[finnman]

Oregon bucks are just incredible looking! Nicely done!

[Timberstalker]

Congrats!  Nice buck and a boat load of memories!

[WildBear]

Awesome! What a great time! 

[Dan-o]

Awesome deal, Carl

[Jpmiller]

Great buck, congrats to you and your father! How many more tags are in your camp?

[BGLEMIN]

Congrats to you and your dad!! That's a great looking buck!!

[Bigshooter]

Nice.   

[CJ1962]

Ok, lets see if I can tell a good story.  Left Auburn WA Thursday night and drove to my sisters house in Boring OR, yes if you didn't know this is a real town in Oregon.  Left her house Friday morning for a place on Hwy 140 30+ miles east of Adel OR.  Made it to Adel in a little over 6 hours.  This is a pretty small town, but with Antelope season opening tomorrow the place was busy.  The Campground, Gas Station, Restaurant and bar all seemed to be being run by the same young girl.  When I pulled up to get gas, she was like, "good you're from Washington, I will turn the pump on and pump what you need and then come in and pay.  I have to cook food."  Topped of the jeep and filled up a couple of extra cans as well and went inside to pay.  The restaurant/bar was packed at a little after 3pm.  A good mix of ranchers and hunters.  Finally got her attention and paid for the gas.  She was so busy she forgot who I was and what I was paying for.  You have to love the honesty and trust in small towns.  Headed out of town and a little over a 1/2 hour rolled into Antelope camp.  My dad who is 78 and his hunting partner Harlan who is 76 (Both had tags) were just hanging out waiting for each of their sons to show up.  His son John showed up about an hour later.  Both of the old guys had drawn this tag 15 years ago and had both been successful back then.  Harlan had helped another hunter get an Antelope a few years ago, but my dad hadn't been back here since.  Since we had some daylight left I asked if they knew where they were going in the morning and they assured me they did.  Even though Harlan was 3 years younger, he had triple by-pass surgery several months ago and was having some breathing and lightheadedness issues that he felt were altitude related.  We were camped at ~6200'.  I will end day one with a sunset picture.

[CJ1962]

Saturday morning opening day, the alarm goes off at 3:30am and everyone is up and getting ready.  Harlan says he feels a better.  My dad and I are in my Jeep Cherokee and Harlan and his son are in his Chevy pickup.  Find out that my dad really doesn't know how to get where we are going and that we will be following Harlan out across the desert.  After some amount of time 1/2 - 1 hour.  Harlan radio's me on the CB that he is lost.  I reply that I have our slug track on my GPS so we're not really lost .  He agrees and for the first time I am told what land marker we are looking for.  Anyway we turn around and follow our path back until we get to where we want to hunt.  My dad doesn't recognize it, but he is 78 and it has been 15 years since he has been there.  Harlan tells us which direction to head and eventually we will see some rim rock that defines where the water hole that my dad shot his Antelope in 15 years ago.  Harlan and his son are going out a slightly different direction to where there are some rock blinds that he has been successful at in the past.  As my dad and I are walking out across the desert, I realize that even though I think I am walking really slow it is still to fast for my dad.  So I slow down to his pace and ask him if he thinks we are in the right place and he says it doesn't look familiar to him.  I'm thinking to myself this is a great start to the first day, but don't sweat it we should have time to get it done.  After about a 1/2 mile I see the rim rock that is supposed to indicate the water hole and shortly after I spot Antelope heading towards it.  They are a long way off, but we have no cover so we watch and wait for them to disappear.  Then we move as quickly as we can until we see another group.  We stop and wait again for them to disappear and then move again.  This repeats itself 3 or more times and I'm thinking this is going to be easy and we're going to tag out on day 1.  I quickly find out that there is no way to sneak within 300 yds of the water hole and Antelope from the direction we have come.  So we drift over to where the Antelope have been coming from and try and find a spot we can sit and wait for them to come back out.  After a while we hear a shot that is close, but we aren't sure where it came from.  But we get more ready incase some of the Antelope spook out of the hole.  We start to see some Pronghorns coming out but not where we thought and they are well out of range.  We decide to wait and hope some come our direction, but it becomes clear that they aren't and so we decide to move.  Once again I am moving to fast and have to slow down and wait.  I can see a decent buck and hope that we can cut him off, but when we see him again he is sky lined at 220yds.  My dad gets a good look at him and says he is too small for day 1.  Plus he is not going to take a shot at a sky lined animal.  His previous and only other pronghorn was 12".  I'm like all right let's look for another one.  So we walk over to the edge and look down to the water and we see 3 hunters and a non hunter (No gun and in blue jeans) walking in the basin and figure they must of been who shot and they are looking for blood.  One of the guys spots us and heads our way.  He's pretty sure his buddy missed but asks us if we saw any animal that looked hit.  We told them we hadn't.

Pretty much all the Pronghorns are out of sight, it's 10am, it's getting warm, and my GPS says we are about a mile from where the rigs are parked.  This is when I find out my dad hasn't brought any water.  I share my water out of my aqua pack several times as we slowly move back across the desert.  I mentally make a note to make sure he brings water in the future and to carry a couple of extra bottles as backup.  When we make it back to the rigs we find Harlan and his son already there.  He hadn't mage it very far across the desert before he started feeling poorly again.  So they came back to the rigs and sat and glassed.  We talk about the hunt and my dad and Harlan start arguing whether this is the same spot from 15 years ago or not.  Harlan is sure it is, but my dad isn't.  John and I start laughing and make some comments about grumpy old men.  We head back to camp for some lunch and a nap.  There is no shade in camp at noon!  Fortunately inside the trailer is cooler than outside, so we take a nap.  At 2pm there is enough shade to sit outside.  I am no pronghorn hunting expert, but I have read you can hunt them all day.  I try and convince my dad that driving around in an Air conditioned rig is better than sitting around in a gravel pit.  But he is not interested.  We do drive up on Antelope butte in the evening and glass.  We see a few groups of antelope, but not any with a good enough buck.  I will end Saturday with a picture of the water hole.

[Jpmiller]

Leaving us hanging! Sounds good so far, reminds me of what it's like going out with my dad when I can get him to. Cant wait to hear about the pronghorn.

[CJ1962]

Sunday started out good.  We all knew where we were going and how to get there.  My dad and I were going out towards the water hole, but were going to sit in a small depression and try and ambush one on its way to water.  On the way out we spotted some but didn’t see any good bucks in the group so kept moving.  We got to the spot and got set up.  There was not as much cover as I would have liked and my dad needed to sit on a rock to get him in a comfortable position to shoot off of sticks.  I was worried we were too exposed, but the Antelope seemed to be more curious of us then cautious.   Every time a group came in sight they would stop and stare at us, but as long as we didn’t move they would eventually parade by at 150 yds.  We got to look over several bucks that just weren’t quite big enough.  One was very wide and I tried to convince him to shoot it.  When you looked at him from the side he didn’t look anything special, but when he would face you he looked good.  I felt he had the length that my dad was looking for but it was just too hard to be certain, so we let him walk.  Here’s a picture of him.  Unfortunately it is with my phone and you can’t zoom in enough to see what I am talking about.
 

[CJ1962]

Around 9am a shot went off from the water hole and we started seeing Antelope coming out of the basin.  This time several were coming in our direction.  We had a buck and a doe coming our way and in the spotting scope I could tell he was one that we hadn’t already seen that morning and he looked like a good buck.  The buck and the doe kept coming and at one point I ranged him at 150yds.  I stopped looking at him in the spotting scope and tried to keep the movement to a minimum.   My dad surprised me when he said he was going to take him.  I told him to wait a second so I could get the video camera on, but he didn’t hear me and shot.  I was looking down at the shot, so didn’t see it.  He told me right away that he felt he rushed it and jerked the trigger.  We were able to watch the buck and doe run for about a ½ mile up and over a hill.  They never slowed and he kept up with hear the whole way.  Even though we were pretty sure it was a clean miss, I went and looked for blood and hiked all the way to the top of the hill and scanned across the desert to make sure.  When I caught up to him on the way back to the rig we talked about the shot and decided to check his sights.  He had taken a slight fallen yesterday, but we both felt the gun had been ok.  We stopped at a dry water hole with a good berm and he took a 60 yd shot.  He just missed it to the right but elevation was good, so he didn’t shoot anymore.  When we got back to camp Harlan and his son hadn’t seen any shooters and Harlan informed us that he still wasn’t feeling well and was going to go home after the Monday morning hunt.  This bummed my dad out, plus missing didn’t help either.  The good news was my younger brother (Steve) and nephew (Vince) were going to show up today.  When they showed up we filled them in on all the details of the past 2 days got them settled in, had an early quick dinner then went out for an evening hunt.  We dropped my dad and nephew at a water hole that was very close to a road.  I had driven by it before and wasn’t that impressed with it being so close to a road, but we heard an Antelope had been shot there that morning and there was a gut pile close by.  I drove my brother around to show him the lay of the land and that we needed to get Dad pumped up again.  We discussed Steve sitting with him in the morning and Vince and I going to a high vantage point to glass.  Here’s some pictures of dad walking across the desert in the morning.

[CJ1962]

Monday we headed out and found a rig parked where we normally parked.  I guess parking in the same place two days in a row clued someone in that this might be a good spot.  We switched to plan B and hunted a different draw that we had seen antelope using.  It was just as exposed as the spot we were in yesterday and my brother didn’t like it, but they saw several goats, just none that were big enough.  My nephew and I went on a long walk to another vantage point and glassed.  We also saw lots of antelope, just no shooters either.  We headed back to camp around noon and helped Harlan and his son pack up.  They had seen a good Antelope that morning but it was about 500yds away.  For the evening my nephew and my dad sat at the same waterhole they sat in the night before and my brother and I drove around and glassed.  We found a better place to sit and hide from the antelope going to water in the morning so felt good about the plan for the morning.   Here’s a picture of the Doherty hang glider launch sign, we didn’t ever see any hang gliders, but it was one of the best spots for cell phone coverage.

[CJ1962]

Tuesday, we got up a little earlier to make sure we got our spot.  The day started out bad, got worse, then ended great.  We got or spot and Steve and Dad walked in to where they would sit.  Vince and I walked to another vantage point where we could glass any antelope headed their way.  Shortly after 7:30am we saw a group of antelope headed their way with what looked like a good buck.  They took their sweet time, but eventually dropped in and we lost sight of them.  I told Vince we should here a shot in the next few minutes if there was a good buck.  Sure enough a couple of minutes later a single shot went off.  Vince and I jumped up and started heading for the rim hoping for the radio call that he got him.  We started seeing antelope come out of the basin and could see a good buck, my heart sank and a few seconds later Steve radioed that he had missed a 250 yd shot at the wide buck that we had passed on Tuesday.  I found the wide buck in the group and watched him travel for close to a mile, so I knew it was another clean miss.  We discussed plans and they wanted to stay where they were at until about 10am.  Not seeing any antelope in the area, Vince and I decided to go for a drive and check out some new country.  We saw several groups of antelope just now shooters.  When I had left Auburn I hooked my Warn Winch to the front receiver and locked it in with the Bolt lock http://www.boltlock.com/ the roads in the area are pretty rough with very few smooth sections.  As we were driving back to pick up my brother and dad we hit what I thought was a big rock in a relatively smooth section of road.  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it, but we were late to picking them up so I kept going.  When we got to the spot to pick them up, I got out and started looking under the jeep for any damage.  Everything looked good until I walked around the front and saw that the winch was gone.  I couldn’t believe it, it just wasn’t possible.  We all loaded up and headed back to the spot that I het the “rock” there in the middle of the road was my winch.  It was pretty beat up and I don’t know if it can be repaired.  We picked up all the pieces and looked briefly for the lock, but couldn’t find it.  Everyone was tired and hungry, so if figured I would look later and we headed to camp.  The only thing I can figure is one of two scenarios.  I didn’t get it properly locked when I left Auburn, or at some point the lock failed.  I’m pretty sure the pin wouldn’t break and if I hadn’t gotten it locked, I think I would have lost it sooner.  Here’s a pic of the winch.

[CJ1962]

So we’re all in a good mood heading back to camp.  When we get back to camp it looks like it’s been pretty windy.  My nephew’s tent has moved.  Fortunately not too far.