Between myself and several friends and family, we had 11 doe pronghorn tags in 2019. Ten of those tags were for Wyoming and 1 was in Utah.
My brother-in-law, his daughter, my son, and I decided to take a day when the kids were out of school over Fall Break and try to fill a handful of those Wyoming tags. So on Oct 17th we woke up early and drove to the hunt unit in Wyoming. In the prior years locating pronghorn was easy, however this year would be a dramatic departure from that norm. We drove around the HMA and struggled to locate any pronghorn. We were finally able to locate a small herd and my son, Logan, drew the straw to make the first stalk. We crawled over a small rise and set up on the herd. They were 330 yards away and unaware of our presence, but Logan could not get steady on the shooting sticks so we decided to back out and loop around the herd to try and get a bit closer but also be in a better spot for him to get a shot from the prone position. As we worked our way around the herd they began to feed off in the opposite direction and ended up wandering out of his range before we could get back into position.
We went the rest of the day without another quality opportunity being presented, and the only excitement coming from my brother-in-law realizing that his pistol was no longer on his right hip and we spent a good amount of time retracing our steps in an attempt to locate it. We were not able to turn it up, so he returned the next day to continue looking for it and in the process was able to fill one of his two tags.
I had cashed in my 4 doe pronghorn points in Utah and drew a tag in northeastern Utah. My plan is to use this tag as a scouting mission to see if it would be worth hunting bucks in the next handful of years. I made plans with my friend Doug to spend two days splitting time between Wyoming and Utah trying to fill the 5 tags that we had between us. We left early on Oct 23rd and spent the day in Wyoming. I was able to fill one of my two tags in the morning and we spent the rest of the afternoon chasing pronghorn in circles out in the open sage flats. We decided to get a motel room in a little hole in the wall rather than drive all the way home and all the way back out the next morning.
The next morning we drove into the unit that my Utah tag was valid for and it didn't take long before we spotted a herd of 30 plus pronghorn. We shadowed the herd for a while and eventually the herd turned and put themselves into a very vulnerable position. After crossing a grazing allotment fence, the herd turned toward the road where we were able to intersect them. I filled my tag with a doe not 50 yards from the road before 10am. We decided that we would hustle back to Wyoming and spend the afternoon there trying to fill the 3 remaining doe tags that we had for Wyoming. We pulled onto the HMA and spotted a herd feeding in the same location where Logan had his opportunity days before. It was Doug's turn, and with surgical precision he had two pronghorn on the ground. We quartered the pronghorn and got them in the cooler.
My brother-in-law, his daughter, Logan, and I again returned to Wyoming on Nov 1, but this trip was cut short when we got word that my brother-in-law's father had had a stroke that morning. We hurried home because some things just take priority.
On Nov 16th Logan and I decided to take the day to go and check out the area in Utah where we have cow elk tags. We drove around a while and got a good feel for some of the areas but didn't see any elk, about lunch time we decided to head back to Wyoming and see if we could find some pronghorn. We were able to locate one small herd and tried putting a stalk on them but they were extremely skittish and we just couldn't get close to them. We did however see some amazing mule deer bucks rutting in the area.
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