As we drove my brother-in-law counselled me to fill my tags first, getting mine out of the way rather than trying to fill her tags first and risking running out of time to fill my own tags. I complied with his wishes and vowed to try and take care of things quickly on my end.
As we pulled off the freeway and onto the dirt county road we immediately began spotting mule deer in the sage. The kids enjoyed seeing the mulies but knew that was not what we were after, my boys had accompanied me on this hunt before and they knew the drill, begging me to hurry it along to the first spot we like to check… a pivot sprinkler that they like to call “the circle field.” Sure enough, the tan and white dots that we hoped to be there were there and we parked the car and began stalking thru the cut field. The herd was easily 50 head strong and we pushed them around the field pretty good that morning.
At one point in time I had pushed them down out of the field to the north and into a creek bottom and once they got out of sight I figured they would huddle up down in the bottom. Sure enough, as I peeked over the edge there they were in a huge huddled mass. I knew that my niece was making her way over to the fence line to the west so instead of taking any shots myself I decided to just go on a full trot down into the creek bottom circling towards them from the east to try to push them back up into the field along that west fence line. I’ve rarely had success with one of these types of plans as the animals never seem to go where I want them to… but this time the pronghorn followed the script to the letter and I watched them hurry back up to the field along that fence line. A few seconds passed and I heard a single gunshot. I made my way up back up to the circle field and was told how all the pronghorn ran past them at 20 yards, one slowed to a stop, she fired… and missed completely!
The great thing about pronghorn hunting is there is no time to sit and lament your misses… you need not go very far to find another potential target. So we quickly turned our attention from the miss to other nearby groups of pronghorn and split up to make stalks on different groups. I spotted a group of 7 does making their way through the sagebrush just a couple hundred yards away near an old gas pipeline road. I was able to put an obstruction between myself and the does and sneak my way in close. I steadied the rifle, popped out from behind the obstruction, picked out my target and fired. The bullet hit its mark with the telltale smack of a bullet hitting flesh and six pronghorn does ran off. I was trying out some Hornady GMX bullets out of my 7mm-08 on this hunt… and being such a close shot I was grateful for the solid copper construction of these bullets. I had taken pronghorn at close range with standard cup & core bullets in previous years and the amount of shrapnel and meat loss was unfortunate. The terminal performance of the bullet was textbook and no shrapnel!
I noted where the doe I had shot went down but kept tabs on where the herd ran off to. They slowed to a stop about 200 yards away. I again took aim at the herd, picked out my target and pulled the trigger. The smack of bullet hitting flesh confirmed the shot and 5 pronghorn does ran off.
I began the work to process both pronghorn, trying to get the meat into the cooler as quickly as possible. As I was working on processing the first doe I heard a shot close by. Walking the meat back to the car I crossed paths with my niece and found that she had shot a big old doe. I hustled my meat back to the car and returned to help them out but by the time I got back they were all finished up. It was barely 10am and we had three does in coolers in the back of the Suburban.
There were still pronghorn out milling about in the circle field but we decided to leave them alone for a bit and come back if needed. We hopped in the car and drove down the road about 30 yards before spotting a large herd coming from the south in the direction of the circle field. We shadowed them along the road for maybe a hundred yards before the herd put themselves in a vulnerable position so my niece jumped out of the car and used one of the barbed wire fence posts as a rest. The herd milled around there for what seemed like forever and I found myself muttering “shoot… you gotta shoot… sweetheart, you gotta shoot now” from my vantage point in the driver’s seat of the Suburban. She finally picked out a pronghorn bringing up the rear of the herd and fired. I watched it take off and run about 20 yards before tumbling. She wasn’t sure of the shot and her dad was a bit concerned that the shot wasn’t great but I reassured them I saw the pronghorn go down.
It was shortly after lunchtime and we had all four tags filled… but we determined that it was still too early to head home. I had heard that there were some old pioneer landmarks nearby so we went off exploring the pioneer and early settler history of the area. It was cool to stop and read the markers and see the landmarks, the kids really enjoyed seeing the old ghost town homes and poking around some of the other sites.
That consumed the remainder of the afternoon and we stopped for dinner at Arby’s on the way home.
I processed the meat over the next couple days. The backstraps, tenderloins, and a couple roasts were wrapped for steak and 18 pounds of ground earmarked for hickory and spicy lime jerky that I’ll make at a later date.
