After not drawing any tags in Utah this year I decided to hunt antelope in Wyoming on left over tags. There were only a couple of units with tags available, all of which were listed as difficult access. I looked at 17, 22 and 23 and decided to go with 22 for a buck and a doe. I discovered that about half of the accessible public land was mule deer country and not antelope country.
On day two I decided to fill my doe tag. I was on top of a hill and had a doe in a basin below me on BLM land. I ranged her at 455 yards, dialed up my turret and held at the junction of her neck and shoulder to compensate for the cross wind I was feeling at the top of the hill. At the shot she just crumpled and the WACK! of a solid hit echoed back to me a second later. I dropped down off the hill to retrieve her and immediately noticed the lack of wind down lower. When I got to her I discovered that my bullet had hit exactly where I was aiming. Lesson learned on wind calls in broken terrain. I took the photo back up on top of the hill.
By day three I had covered literally every public area in the unit accessible by public road and had put on about 400 miles on the SUV. There were very few goats on public land and I had seen and passed up about a dozen bucks, most of which didn't even have prongs or much of a backward curve to their horns. Dinkathon! I didn't even see any impressive bucks on private land. The largest buck I saw was probably 14" with good prongs, a low to mid 70's buck.
I only had 4 days to hunt so I was getting a little antsy and debating whether I wanted to shoot a dink on day 4 to fill my tag. I had just glassed a herd of goats on private land and drove over the hill when I spotted a lone buck on the top of a high grassy hill. Not big but better than I had been seeing on public land and what do you know, he was right in the middle of a school section! (state land). I drove on past and parked the SUV out of sight of the buck and started my stalk. I walked as far as I dared up the hill then dropped down into a crawl. Through the grass I spotted the buck's horns as he fed along. I slithered over to put myself in front of his route and as he fed broadside I realized there was no way to shoot from prone. I rose up on my knees and shot him off hand at about 100 yards with my 13 lb rifle with arms tired from crawling. Fortunately I made a good shot, taking him through both shoulders. The Bighorn mountains made a beautiful backdrop for the photo. My rifle is in 7mm STW with a Hart barrel, Stiller Predator action, Jewell trigger and McMillan A5 stock. The scope is a Nikon Monarch 5-20x. I was shooting 168 gr JLK VLD's at 3200 fps. They performed nicely on both goats.The doe was taken right through the vertebrae and had a bout a two inch exit wound. The buck's on side shoulder was broken and the exit through the other shoulder (bone not hit) was about an inch and a half. There was fairly extensive damage to the lungs. I don't think I will hunt that unit again but it was a fun hunt.
On day two I decided to fill my doe tag. I was on top of a hill and had a doe in a basin below me on BLM land. I ranged her at 455 yards, dialed up my turret and held at the junction of her neck and shoulder to compensate for the cross wind I was feeling at the top of the hill. At the shot she just crumpled and the WACK! of a solid hit echoed back to me a second later. I dropped down off the hill to retrieve her and immediately noticed the lack of wind down lower. When I got to her I discovered that my bullet had hit exactly where I was aiming. Lesson learned on wind calls in broken terrain. I took the photo back up on top of the hill.
By day three I had covered literally every public area in the unit accessible by public road and had put on about 400 miles on the SUV. There were very few goats on public land and I had seen and passed up about a dozen bucks, most of which didn't even have prongs or much of a backward curve to their horns. Dinkathon! I didn't even see any impressive bucks on private land. The largest buck I saw was probably 14" with good prongs, a low to mid 70's buck.
I only had 4 days to hunt so I was getting a little antsy and debating whether I wanted to shoot a dink on day 4 to fill my tag. I had just glassed a herd of goats on private land and drove over the hill when I spotted a lone buck on the top of a high grassy hill. Not big but better than I had been seeing on public land and what do you know, he was right in the middle of a school section! (state land). I drove on past and parked the SUV out of sight of the buck and started my stalk. I walked as far as I dared up the hill then dropped down into a crawl. Through the grass I spotted the buck's horns as he fed along. I slithered over to put myself in front of his route and as he fed broadside I realized there was no way to shoot from prone. I rose up on my knees and shot him off hand at about 100 yards with my 13 lb rifle with arms tired from crawling. Fortunately I made a good shot, taking him through both shoulders. The Bighorn mountains made a beautiful backdrop for the photo. My rifle is in 7mm STW with a Hart barrel, Stiller Predator action, Jewell trigger and McMillan A5 stock. The scope is a Nikon Monarch 5-20x. I was shooting 168 gr JLK VLD's at 3200 fps. They performed nicely on both goats.The doe was taken right through the vertebrae and had a bout a two inch exit wound. The buck's on side shoulder was broken and the exit through the other shoulder (bone not hit) was about an inch and a half. There was fairly extensive damage to the lungs. I don't think I will hunt that unit again but it was a fun hunt.
