I try to hunt with everyone I represent when it is at all practical. Last year I was able to hunt with our outfitter Calvin Taylor in Colony Wyoming and this year I was able to hunt his ranches at Gillette and Kaycee, Wyoming. To say these ranches are under great management would be an understatement. We saw 100's of antelope on the first day at Gillette. I looked at so many mature bucks they all seemed to run together. On day 2 I made a very long shot for this ranch at 206 yards on the goat below. Ordinarily a client could count on a shot at 100-150 yards as normal and it was obvious that it would have been possible in almost any situation.

Anyone would have to see this ranch to beleive the number of pronghorns there and the amount of good bucks. It is phenomenol!

At this ranch there is no lodging or food provided but Gillette has many moderately price hotels and restaurant and with the ranch only being 6 miles from town the whole thing makes a pretty convenient package.

After our 2 days in Gillette we moved to Kaycee and a completely different type of antelope hunt. Here the terrain is broken with pinion covered ridges interspersed with sage flats. This was much differnt from the completely open country around Gillette. This ranch has a beautiful creek bottom loaded with whitetails and some mule deer higher up as well as the antelope.

The antelope here were far less numerous but the trophy quality better. They were also a litte more skittish but very huntable. I took the one Sadie is holding below at 162 yards because we all liked the way he looked but I also saw several much longer horned bucks.

On the second day there we hunted a specific old cull buck mulie they wanted out of the breeding scheme and we found him.

I shot a rather untraditional antelope/deer rifle in the 338-06 with 210 gr. Nosler Partitions. It shot clean through everything as expected but those goats just ran like mad in both cases until they just pumped out. In all 3 cases the exit was over an inch with the blood just blowing out the hole. I guess it is not easy to predict what an animals will do once hit.

We stayed with the ranchers on this hunt. Accommodations were good in a trailer seperate from the main house and Retha the mistress of the ranch was a real talent in the kitchen.

We stayed just long enough on day 3 to meet a couple of my clients coming in and then haeded back to Cody.

Next week I'm headed to Idaho for whitetail and if I do half as well as we did on this hunt I'll be very please.

Mark



Gillette goat



Kaycee antelope

Damn Mark, NICE!!!

Your goat looks like he would make the book--does he? Tell us a little about the hunt, what rifles/calibers did you and your wife use?

Congrats--Don

Don,

As you can see I've added my text now. I'm not going to print scores or horn length because I seem to get hammered here when I do. The Gillette goat is a nice one but the other ranch at Kaycee really has better trophy quality.

Thanks for the compliments!

Mark

Very nice! congrats, and thanks for sharing.

Looks great Mark-I am looking forward to it.

Mark,

Those are darn fine goats for anywhere in the west. I'd say those are two great ranches.