Pathfinder JR and Little Pathfinder's 2020 Wyoming Antelope Hunt

[Pathfinder101]

This year we attempted a “first” for us. Wyoming antelope hunting.
  Pathfinder JR and I attempted an antelope hunt in Montana back when he was 13 with disastrous results… 90% winterkill in our unit.  We hunted 4 days and never saw a goat we could shoot at.  This year, we decided that it was time to redeem ourselves, get the skunk out of the boat and put in for Wyoming tags. 
I have 4 points that I have been banking, and I didn’t want to burn them, plus I thought that trying to get 3 goats on the ground in 4 days might be a bridge too far, so we only put PathfinderJR and LittlePathfinder in for the tags.  We found a unit they could draw with no points and put in.  This spring we found they had drawn Unit 17 Tags, so we began to plan.  We did know upfront that a unit you can draw with no points was going to be challenging to find goats on public land (what little of it there was), but we didn’t predict how hard it would be.

[Pathfinder101]

First off, I cannot say that I recommend this unit if you are wanting to do a public land hunt.  You will see why when I tell the story, but suffice to say, I am certain that at least one boy would have gone home empty handed if we had kept trying to find pronghorns on the few pieces of public land that held them.

[Pathfinder101]

I will say that there were TONS of antelope in the Unit.  We chose not to hunt opening day (on the advice of nearly everyone that has ever hunted Antelope in Wyoming).  I don’t know if it would have gone any differently if we had, but by the time we got there a week after the season had started, it seemed that every pronghorn had OnX Maps loaded on their phones and were avoiding the public pieces like the plague.  We did see hundreds and hundreds of antelope, and over 100 bucks (everything from yearlings up to one buck that I’m pretty sure would have made book), but ALL of them were on private property.  After 18 hours of hunting by road and by foot, we only saw two does that might have been on public land (and only by a few feet if they were).  As you can imagine, it was frustrating and disappointing in the least.

[Pathfinder101]

But I am getting ahead of myself.
We left Walla Walla around 3pm (I’m a teacher) on Tuesday and pulled an all nighter (PathfinderJR and I switched driving duties every few hours) to get to our unit just at daylight.  It was encouraging to see a herd of antelope skylined in the first minutes of light just as we entered our unit (albeit on private land), including 3 bucks that were worthy of pulling off to the side of the road and waking up the boys to look.  We hit WalMart in Gillette to stock up food, breakfast at Perkins and were headed out to find a place to camp. 
Immediately, 3 things were apparent;
1.    Lots of antelope
2.   None of them were on public land
3.   Wyoming was in the midst of a drought that makes ours here in Eastern WA look green and lush
 At first the amount of goats was encouraging and exciting.  About the first 10 herds we stopped for all had good bucks in them.  We had our OnX Maps open in our laps and we figured it was just a matter of time before we came across a herd on one of the scattered chunks of state ground or BLM.  4 hours later we still had not seen an animal on public.  Most of the pieces of public were small enough that you could see the whole thing from the road, so we had only gotten out of the pickup twice to hike up a hill.  Frustration was beginning to set in.
We drove to one of the two larger Walk-In Areas near the center of the unit to find a place to pitch camp.  Even though it was a Wednesday, the place looked like opening day of deer rifle season in Washington.  Pickup trucks and orange dots running around everywhere.  We stopped and visited with a couple of guys from Pennsylvania.  They had both tagged out (on public ground) opening day.  Their dad had been trying to find a goat on public ground for a week and was having no luck.  We set up camp and studied our maps.

[Pathfinder101]

That afternoon, we explored the northern and southern ends of our unit.  There was a large piece of public in the south end that the game bio had told us was more suited to elk than antelope, but we decided to go take a look anyway.  She was right.  We saw a few goats on the way in, but nothing after the first few miles. At one point we did see two does that were very close to being on public land.  After staring at OnX and the goats for a while we decided that they probably were legal.  We started to discuss the fact that we may have to just pray we could kill a doe at some point.
 We did see some nice muley bucks (also on private ground) and got to film some sparring (I’ll try to post it).  The long drive in the dark back to our camp had us planning to hit one of the few spots in the morning that was big enough to hike (albeit a short hike) to the top of a ridge and glass into a bowl on the other side.  There had been no trucks there that afternoon, so we thought it would be a good place to start the day. 

[Pathfinder101]

Up before daylight and in the truck headed to “our” spot.  In the early morning light we spotted a herd of goats from the truck that were headed in the general direction of “our” public piece.  Instead of driving straight there, we decided to watch this herd and see what they did.  As they meandered parallel to the road in the direction of the public land we followed, trying to estimate on OnX how far they were from being “legal”.  There was a very good buck in the group.  After 15 minutes and 300 yards shy of the “line”, the whole herd stopped, turned around and went back into the private in nearly the opposite direction.  There’s no way they didn’t “know” where the boundary was.  I’m pretty sure I saw one of the does consulting a map.
“Well, let’s go hike into that piece.” I said, trying to lift everyone’s (including my own) sagging spirits.  We drove around the corner and found no less than 5 pickups. All parked on the same piece of land.  All empty.  As we glassed into the piece, we could see orange hats, jockeying around for position.  Two guys ran by, at a crouch, obviously intent on something in the bottom of a draw that we couldn’t see.  A few minutes later, 3 muley does came boiling out of the draw.  Almost at once you could see every orange hat turn and start walking back in the direction of the parked trucks.
This was not in the brochure…

[Pathfinder101]

We drove up the road to another public piece and finding it empty, we parked, spread the map out on the tailgate and started trying to come up with Plan B (actually, I think we were on about Plan J at this point). 
“This is hopeless.” PathfinderJR said.  “We are not going to find anything dumb enough to stand on public ground.  We could drive and walk around for a week (which we did not have) and not see two bucks in a legal area.”
 “Everyone has the same OnX Map that we have.” I said. “No one has an advantage in finding goats over us.  We just need to keep at it until we catch up with the laws of averages”.
“We have one advantage…” said Junior, pointing at his little brother. 
Little Pathfinder knew exactly what his brother meant.  He is 13, but looks younger than he is.  He’s very polite, smiles a lot and isn’t afraid of farm dogs.  He has an excellent record of knocking on doors and getting permission to hunt.
“I don’t know if that will work here.” I said. “ I asked everyone.  There is no such thing as getting permission on private land in this unit.  No trespass fees.  No nothing.  The bio said don’t even ask about a landowner “list”.  It doesn’t exist.”
Little Pathfinder looked at me like I just told him he was adopted. 
“Dad.” He said “Let me knock on some doors.”
And that became the new plan.  Drive up to a ranch.  Deploy the cute kid.  Play with the farm dogs for a few seconds, smile, knock, look hopeful and ask nicely.  We figured we had about the same odds as finding a buck standing on a little 80 acre square looking lost.
Mostly, no one was home.  Little Pathfinder met a lot of dogs (he loves dogs, so he spent more time playing fetch than he did talking to farmers), a couple of renters, but only one actual landowner with decision making capabilities.  That one was a “no”.  Outfitters leasing the land for hunting.  She also warned him that most of the ranches were the same situation.  11 doors and a couple of hours later we were no closer to an antelope than we had been that morning.  We did see one buck that I feel would have made Boone and Crockett.  Tall, hooked and heavy, he carried his mass up past his cutters.  He was bedded with two does in a private field with not a care in the world. 
Door number 12 our luck changed though.  A nice fella about 70 years old who was a 3rd generation rancher whose grandfather had homesteaded the 2400 acre cattle/wheat ranch in the 1890s.  After a few minutes of visiting in the driveway, Little Pathfinder popped the question.  To our shock, the rancher agreed to let us hunt for a modest trespass fee.
I suppose we could have taken our chances and tried to keep finding goats on public land.  To be honest, we had not really exhausted all of our options.  There were 3 or 4 pieces that we could have actually hiked into first, but at that point I felt like we were being offered something worth the cost.  We had already invested quite a bit of time and money into the hunt, and the trespass fee was about what I was already spending on fuel.  I paid for Little Pathfinder and Pathfinder JR actually had the cash stuffed in his glove box from selling firewood.  We were happy to help the rancher pay his taxes this year.

[Pathfinder101]

When LP asked him to hunt, the rancher eyed him up suspiciously.  Like I mentioned earlier, LP looks a bit younger than he is. 
“Can you hit what you’re aiming at?” He asked. 
Not a bit offended, LP grinned and answered “I can hit a gong out to 500 yards sir.”
The farmer looked suspicious again.  “Ok then.  I guess we’ll see.”
The rancher decided that we should be guided on our hunt (I think he was worried that we would shoot a water tank or a tractor).  He directed us to the portion of his ranch across the highway (the furthest away from his house and barns I noticed).  There was a water hole and a deep draw.  He said there would probably be goats bedded or feeding in that area.
He was right.  We glimpsed a couple of bedded does as we slipped through the gate towards the water hole.  Creeping up the hill on the opposite side of the draw we spotted ears, so we went prone and began belly crawling.  We crested the top and found about 20 antelope, including a nice buck bedded in the draw.  The buck was quite a ways off to our left.  I spotted another buck down in the bottom of the draw. I could only see the top of his back, and he had his head down feeding, so I never got a look at his horns, but his body looked to be about the size of the bedded buck.  He fed down into the draw and disappeared.  We decided to back out and loop around to the left to get a batter angle on the bedded shooter.
After crabbing backwards back down the hill, we trucked it to the end of the waterhole and started creeping back up the hill towards the goats.  100 yards from our intended shooting position we went prone again and began belly crawling.  I looked over at PathfinderJR.  He had elected to go short-sleeves that day, and I could tell he was regretting that choice.  As we churned through the packed sand and gravel, I could see blood on his elbows. 
Cresting the top of the draw we hugged the ground and tried to get our bearings on the antelope that were now scattered around all within 300 yards of us.  We spotted the bedded buck right away.  There were several smaller bucks in the herd, but no other shooters.  I still couldn’t see the buck feeding down in the draw.  After a while, PathfinderJR noticed a good buck that was far up the draw from the herd, at over 400 yards.  It was a very good buck.  As He lay there with the rangefinder trying to decide if he wanted to take a 450 yard shot, the other buck fed out of the draw and we finally got a look at him.  He was not as tall as the bedded buck, but heavier with really good cutters.  I told JR to forget about the far buck.  We now had two shooters at under 300 yards, chip shots for both boy’s rifles. 
We made sure each one had the correct buck in their scopes and let Little Pathfinder fire first.  His buck, quartering slightly away at 243 yards dropped like a stone in it’s tracks.  The other buck got to it’s feet and Pathfinder JR put him back down in his bed again at 267 yards.  Both bucks were stone dead within 5 seconds of each other.  We got to our feet and the rancher was behind us, grinning from ear to ear.  He said he didn’t think he had ever seen two antelope die that fast.  He walked over to Little Pathfinder and clapped his hand on his shoulder.  “I guess you were right about your shooting.” He said.

[Pathfinder101]

 

[Pathfinder101]

In all, our trip turned out better than we could have hoped.  As I said earlier, I can’t say that I recommend the unit, due to the scarce amount of public land, the number of tags issued and the lack of goats anywhere we could legally hunt.  I would like to say that we outwitted nature, bucked the odds and killed big antelope in public land, but instead we met a true Wyoming native who shared his family story with us on his land while we shared a beer and skinned our goats hanging from his tractor.  It turned out to be a grand experience.

 
 

[Pathfinder101]

A few more pics of the boys goats.

[Pathfinder101]

Packing up to go home.

[Pathfinder101]

Dinner last night.

[Woodchuck]

That's awesome man, great story as always. Amazing how much Little looks like JR did at that age.

[Sutherland]

Wow just an incredible write up, sounds like an amazing hunt. Great job raising your boys, enough can't be said about that! Congratulations all! Really appreciate you sharing with us.