When living in California I applied for preference points for pronghorn for many years without success. Having recently moved to Arizona, the draw situation is no better and possibly worse. Since pronghorn have been on my bucket list for a long time, it seemed the only option to hunt one in this lifetime was to find a hunt in another state. After inquiring here a number of outfitters were recommended but there were not any hunts available until next year. However, about a month ago Jeremy of Sagebrush Hunts contacted me with a cancellation hunt in Northwest Texas.
I would be hunting with Christian on his family's ranch which is about 8000 acres near Dalhart, TX. The terrain is gently rolling hills and the pastures have bunch grass and the occasional cholla and yucca. We arrived at the ranch early morning in a gentle rain and hadn't driven 15 minutes when we saw the first buck. He stood 75 yards off and stared at us and had a nice heart shape and good horns but Christian thought we could do better. As we drove from pasture to pasture we saw many bucks and does but none were what we were looking for. As we were glassing one group with a small buck in it, a larger buck with unique horns approached the herd but the smaller buck ran him off. Christian liked the mass and the unique rack on this buck and we decided that we would try to take him.
We drove around a low ridge to keep out of sight where we thought we could set up on the buck but when we looked over the ridge, the buck had changed course. We moved again to try to cut him off but when we approached him again he had changed course again. The buck was moving steadily and only taking an occasional bite of grass but kept changing direction so we could never get closer than 4-500 yards. We decided to let him settle down and continue around the ranch to see what else we could find.
After lunch, the weather had cleared some and the rain had stopped so we had much better visibility. The problem was the antelope had virtually disappeared. In the morning we had seen small bunches of pronghorn when we crested almost every ridge. Now it was as if they had crawled into prairie dog holes and vanished. We drove from pasture to pasture stopping occasionally for Christian to stand on top of the truck to get a better view. He even climbed the windmill towers to see even more area and finally found the buck we had seen in the morning. He was still by himself but was grazing so we thought we could put a stalk on him.

We crawled to the top of a ridge and watched him lay down on a ridge opposite of us about 1000 yards away. We had to crawl down and across a gentle valley in order to get close enough for a shot. We slowly made progress as the buck was looking the other way by keeping a cholla or yucca or another bush between the buck and us. With a few cactus spines in my hands and knees I was reminded of what a PITA it is to crawl with a rifle. Then it began to rain. Are we having fun yet? Thankfully it was only a short shower and by this time three does had fed down near the buck and he got up and started feeding with them so wasn't paying any attention to Christian and me.
We finally got to within about 200 yards and decided it was about as close as we could get. We set up the trigger sticks and I sat down but couldn't see the buck because of the grass and bushes. The only way I could get high enough was to kneel on one knee while stretching as tall as possible and put my rear elbow on the other knee, my least favorite shooting position.
At the shot the antelope milled around but didn't know where the shot had come from and it was obviously a miss. I shot again when the buck cleared some brush but missed again. The buck moved towards us and stood in a clearing and my brain finally engaged. If the buck was not hit but moved toward us, he didn't know where the shot came from but heard the bullet tearing through the grass and brush on the far side so I was shooting over his back. This time I aimed for the bottom of his brisket just behind the front leg. Bang! WOK! He ran about 25 yards a keeled over.
He had one horn forward and one back


The next day we went out and massacred a few prairie dog towns.
A great hunt with some great folks and some great Texas hospitality.

That's some fine eating! Congratulations.

Nice buck!

Good buck. Way to get it done.

Finally, congrats, that's a decent antelope.

Now you know why they're called: Stink goats",
right?

Not chasing him all over the county he should be
good eating.

Just about anytime you can get within 200 yards
of one, you'd better take the shot. That's a
"short" shot that don't happen too often.

George

Well done!

Nice goat Russ.

That must have been a lucky antelope because that's not like you to miss.

Congratulations and thanks for sharing

.

+ 1

And thanks for sharing.

.

Thanks all. I was wondering if this was going to be a "too easy" hunt. After crawling about 1/2 mile I lost that notion.

Congrats on the nice pronghorn! I hunted with Jeremy's operation in 2011 - had a good time and saw lots of antelope before shooting mine.

Just curious - what rifle/cartridge were you using?

Thanks for the report!

Well done Sir!

quote:

Originally posted by Hannay:
Congrats on the nice pronghorn! I hunted with Jeremy's operation in 2011 - had a good time and saw lots of antelope before shooting mine.

Just curious - what rifle/cartridge were you using?

Thanks for the report!

I've been getting that rifle ready for an upcoming coues hunt so it is my long range set up. 270 with 145 ELDX and a 3-15 SWFA.

Awesome nice buck way to go

Love pronghorn hunting! Great speed goat!