Well, Kiv finally emailed me the pictures. I posted some time back about this antelope hunt in Nebraska. The outfitter and all of us were new to archery hunting these damn prairie ghosts. First, it was more fun than any of us had probably every had (well, except for hunting 400+ bulls in the San Juan of southern Utah---heaven on earth). We used decoys and all of us had shots with our bows. The cool thing is this is the first animal taken with APA Innovations new bow, the Black Mamba. It is also Kiviok's first antelope hunt ever, and he got it on the second day at 72 yards. ALL ON FILM! Yep, the show will air next fall. I shot at a nice buck at 50 yards and watched the arrow barely go right over his back. MY FAULT. (At camp I was hitting a 3" bullseye at 50 for 2 hours). Yea, we got that on film too. We closed in on this buck from 3/4 mile to about 80 yards, then we called him in as well as using our decoy. VERY COOL. The outfitter was shocked that we could do it.

I told him next time, forget the antelope decoy, we need a black angus decoy. I could have killed a nice one on the last afternoon if it weren't for about 80 head of those damn cows. Anyway, here's a few pics from the trip.

Adam and Scott glassing:


Adam and Kiv with Kiv's goat:


Kiv and his first antelope (first antelope hunt too)


A couple of mulies:


Someone drank a little too much water from the windmill:



Walking back with decoy after unsuccessful stalk:


There's no question in my mind I'll be going back. Muzzleloader deer tags are OTC. Archery antelope are OTC. I think deer tags for archery are OTC. We saw tons of bucks, many would go into the 180's. Yep, got those on film too. The antelope are average to a few big ones. We saw about 3 that would go 16-17.5". Unfortunately, the biggest one was on Ted Turner's property---you remember Dances with Wolves? Well, we were pretty much on the other side of the fence. We did see some of Ted's bison. Saw plenty of his antelope too. But, the good thing is, I saw about 8-9 shooter antelope on a chunk of property in the middle of Ted's place that belonged to our outfitter. Very cool. But this chunk was only about 1800 acres. Nevertheless, it had antelope.

Nice goats and sounds like you enjoyed your time out there. I'm headed to the Pine Ridge Unit for Mule Deer this Nov. Any chance you were in that area and if so, I'd love to hear where exactly you were and what you saw for mulies in particular - those two bucks are nice from what I can see.

We will probably be on public grassland but I would still like to learn more about the area anyway.

Brent

We were in Cherry unit. I do not know where Pine Ridge unit is, however the outfitter did state that he had property in Pine something where they do a lot of turkey hunting...by a river.

I saw about 24-26 mulie bucks that would score over 165.

Hmm,
the Cherry unit is not a mule deer unit. I'll have to cross reference with the NE antelope regs. The Pine Ridge is in the extreme NW corner of Nebraska north of the Niobrara River.

24-26 bucks eh? Such things make my heart go pitter-patter-THUMP!

Were they out on the hillsides like the two in your photo or down in the bottom of the draws most often?

Brent

Yep. But remember, we saw that many on 70K acres too. It's not like they were all hanging out on one field.

That river you mention is where we kept going too. So it must be close.

Cherry is a county in the upper part of the state-a little over halfway thru the state to the west and north-I hunted deer there and also south in Loup West or West Loup area I think--back in the 70's, when I lived in Nebr--I also worked on a Ranch outside of Purdum---my dad shot some nice whitey's there and i shot my first buck--a muley there--chris

forgot to say congrats to Kiv---so here goes--well done Kiv---chris