2016 Wyoming Doe/Fawn Pronghorn - Part 2

November 14, 2016
With one tag remaining in my pocket I knew that I had to make good on a promise that I had made to my daughter after leaving her in school and taking my oldest three boys back in October. I also knew that I just could not leave my two year old son at home again… he sobbed uncontrollably when I left him home with mom on that first trip. So, with permission from my daughter, I strapped a two year old in the carseat, plugged in the tablets, and we pointed the car to the east for the hour drive to the ranch where permission had been granted to shoot doe pronghorn.
The drive was smooth and since it was naptime my son slept most of the way. This was the quietest he would be for the remainder of the trip!

I pulled off the Interstate and after a short drive down the dirt road I pulled off to the side to prep my rifle, get out my binoculars, and get my sweater on. We drove along the road slowly stopping occasionally to glass the sagebrush terraces. In the previous trip with just the boys pronghorn were everywhere… such would not be the case this trip. What we lacked in pronghorn we more than made up for in mule deer. There were clusters of deer around every bend, and where there was a group of a half dozen or more does there was a great buck. We saw some fantastic bucks and I would conservatively estimate 18 to 20 bucks that were 4pt or better… a number of them had inline 5th or 6th points and were heavy and dark antlered. Beautiful creatures for certain, and we watched as these bucks paid little attention to my little silver car on the road just yards away as they focused intently on does. We watched two very nice 4pt bucks go toe to toe over a group of 8 or 9 does at about 30 yards, and watched a very nice 3pt buck corner a doe against a fence and rough her up a bit. Poor doe trotted away from that encounter with her hair all ruffled up and it didn’t even occur to me that an eight year old little girl in the front seat next to me might have some questions about what that boy deer was trying to do to that girl deer… in typical dad response I told her to “ask her mother.”

We drove from one end of the ranch all the way to the other without a single pronghorn sighting. I couldn’t figure it out… just four weeks ago there were pronghorn everywhere. And a friend of mine with the same tag went to the same ranch just three days before and shot a doe early in the afternoon. But today, on this afternoon, it was a ghost town. We turned the car around and traced our path back and made it almost all the way back to where we started before I spotted a small herd of pronghorn bedded up on one of the sage terraces, 3 bucks and 2 doe. I let the kids know that I had spotted some but we would have to hike for them. I received no resistance to the suggestion so we found a spot to park the car, got our coats & orange hats and off we went. We crossed a small stream and made our way towards the terrace edge. The small herd was actually in a highly advantageous place for a stalk. The challenge was not the location of the herd… instead it was my entourage! I wish I could have witnessed that stalk from a distance. I decided that there was little sense in trying to be stealthy about this all… so I just walked in plain view of the herd with my son on my shoulders and holding my daughters hand along a barbed-wire fence until we hit about 300 yards. I told them to sit down on a small hill and plug their ears and I walked another 15 yards away from them, rested my gun on the barbed wire fence and promptly missed twice. To perform my due diligence, we slinked under the barbed wire fence, and again with my son on my shoulders and holding my daughters hand we went to just double check where the herd had been when I shot. No blood was found much to the disdain of my daughter, and we continued up until we reached the ridge and peeked over into the next valley. I scanned for brief moment but saw no pronghorn. We turned and as we made our way back to the car I spotted a mule deer shed in a clump of sage about twenty yards in front of me. I took my son off my shoulders and when we got right up to it I asked if there was something wrong with that bush? Both my daughter and son thought it was the coolest thing and they wrestled with it to get it untangled from the clump of sage. Pictures were taken and it was stuffed in my pack to be shown to mom at a later time.

They wanted to look for more sheds so I threw my son back on my shoulders and we just kind of wandered through the sage terrace until it started to get dark and they wanted to head back towards the car. On the way back to the car the sage flats came to life with bunnies scurrying about everywhere. My son had the perfect vantage point from my shoulders and whenever he would spot one running along in front of us he would squeal and point and yell, “Bunny!!!”
We got back to the car right at dark. We got buckled back into the car and headed home… but not without stopping first at the Wendy’s in Evanston for a hamburger and Frosty.

All in all, I think both my daughter and son both had fun, the sum of the parts was greater than the whole with this adventure. Even though they were disappointed that I missed and we didn’t get another pronghorn they loved the little aspects of the journey… driving down a dirt road with their heads out the rolled down windows yelling “Hello deer!” to every cluster of deer, eating an entire bag of jerky, going to Wyoming for the first time, finding the shed antler, seeing all the bunny rabbits, and telling mom all about it when we got home. Most times I hunt so hard with the intent of killing an animal and bringing home the meat that I overlook some of these simple things, this hunt reinforced to me that it’s not the kill that makes success. I had so much fun with my daughter and my young son, I hope the memories of this afternoon and evening are as fond for them.

Utah General Muzzleloader Elk

Brian met me at my house at about 3:30pm and we made the short drive up the canyon to the family cabin. We unloaded quickly, turned on the utilities, made a quick fire in the fireplace, and headed up to the top of the mountain to glass in the last remaining light.
With no animals spotted after about an hour we returned to the cabin and finished getting our personal gear squared away.
Opening morning came quickly and as we were preparing our gear for the day I noticed brake lights just outside the window. Jared had arrived early, I wasn’t expecting him until later that day. We piled into Brian’s truck for the short drive to where we would begin our hunt. I hopped out of the truck, set up my tripod, snapped my binoculars into the harness, and immediately spotted a large herd of elk. The elk were on the move feeding up the ridge to the west across the canyon about a mile away… and we were on the move too. We made a brutal 1.5 mile hike (800ft loss in elevation in the first ¾ mile then gained it all back and then some in the next ¾ mile) to try and get above them but were too late.

We began to make our way along the northern edge of a large bowl and as I slipped into a large stand of pines I was met with a mass of tan bodies erupting from cover. I could hear the group heading north onto private property so I just waited and watched. Soon the string of elk began to file through a small opening. I raised my binoculars fully expecting to see the string of 30 or so cows that we had spotted earlier… instead my eyes beheld bull after bull after bull walk through that small opening. Ranging from spike to nice mature 6x6 bulls, I watched twenty plus bulls walk through that opening. I was stunned… and upset that I had been so close yet unable to do anything about it because of the recent boundary changes that now made where those elk were at off limits to me. In previous years I would have fired without hesitation because that was land I could hunt… now the majority shareholder of the property had roped off “his” portion and made it inaccessible.
For the rest of the day we hiked around and didn’t see much else.

On the hike back out Brian’s knee locked up and he dislocated his knee cap. It was pretty painful and he struggled on the climb back up to the truck.

The second morning I met Jesse at the gate early and by the time we got back to the cabin Jared and Brian were just waking up. We had a tough decision to make with Brian feeling unable to do much hiking. We decided that Brian would stay behind and take it easy that day while Jesse, Jared, and I worked around the area that we hunted the day before. We all drove up to the top again and I immediately spotted what appeared to be the same herd of cows and calves so we again headed off on the 1.5 mile hike down and back up the opposite hillside. This morning was different however, the herd had worked into a north facing hillside that we could glass readily and bedded there.

Jesse and I left Jared there on the north edge of the bowl and began working our way towards a bedded bull and two bedded cows that we were in advantageous positions for us to possibly get a shot. We worked towards the bedded elk and shortly before we got to our desired final destination I watched the bull stand and walk across the face of the hillside just beyond our comfortable muzzleloader range. We continued on to where we wanted to stop and sat for a while because I had not seen either of the two cows move with the bull. We waited there until late in the afternoon and watched deer and moose working through the area the entire time. The deer were beginning to rut pretty hard and every group of does was being monitored by at least one buck. We worked our way back out of the bowl and met up with Jared before hiking back to the truck. Jared and Brian decided to call it a hunt and headed for home.
Jesse and I woke the next morning bright and early and began hiking well before first light. We still did not arrive at the north edge of the bowl until after sun-up. We were hoping to arrive early enough to potentially cut the herd off before they reached their bedding area but the elk were not there that morning. We sat and glassed for several minutes before I spotted a lone cow in some deep shadows down in the bottom of the bowl. The race was on and we took different routes towards the cow. Jesse would take a direct line assault while I would circle to the east and head for a large rock outcropping. If she worked her way directly up the hill in front of us Jesse would get a shot but if she turned and tried to escape down the bottom of the bowl then I would be in a prime position for a shot. As I neared the rock outcropping I spotted the cow working her way up the hill across from me. I steadied on her and waited for her to turn broadside. As soon as she turned I fired and a cloud of smoke completely obscured my view for several seconds. She remained standing and continued to work her way up the hill. I ran closer to where she was and tried to get a second shot but she never presented a good shot. It took Jesse several minutes to get to where I was and after we met back up I decided to try to follow her trail. I could easily tell where she went because of her fresh prints in the snow so I followed them for several yards up the mountain. After weaving through some buck brush and ducking under a couple aspen limbs I heard crashing above me. I looked up just in time to see her bolt out from underneath a cluster of pines never giving me much of a chance for a shot. I looped my way west then north along the edge of the bowl and spent the afternoon cat napping in the sun. More deer were spotted in the afternoon and evening along with a few more moose, but no more elk.

My cow elk tag will open shortly in this same area, and I have been unable to make good on two opportunities to fill that tag already. I’m optimistic that I will be able to fill it during the normal season dates for that tag with my rifle.