First Nevada Pronghorn

A Rare Tag

My nephew Jordan was a bit victimized on his first pronghorn hunt as a youth. Turns out he and my dad did some experimenting with his first tag and they landed one for which we were all ill-prepared. It didn’t help that a massive forest fire raged in the mountains of his area during his season, impacting portions of the area. It was a bit disheartening for us all. Fast forward over 10 years later and I was absolutely delighted to learn of his 2019 Nevada pronghorn tag in my favorite area!

Jordan was lucky to draw this tag with only a few bonus points. He had a few other things working in his favor. First, he was able to hunt with a rifle and he must have been lucky, as he drew his first or second choice. Second, it was in an area we had a lot of recent success with as a family. Finally, I would be hunting pronghorn in the archery season in the same area, the day before his season opened! In the end, it was this factor that helped bend me toward hunting my tag, which was in conflict with my wife’s deer tag, but those are other stories…

My Nevada Pronghorn Preseason

My wife and I found time to scout for my tag in late July and early August, knowing we had two antelope to scout for. My season ended with a successful hunt, but importantly for Jordan, included seven long days afield getting to know the quirks of the area for the year. It was a very wet winter and spring and there was so much water in the area that the antelope were scattered to the four winds. A great thing for the pronghorn, not so great for the archers who sometimes rely on concentrating goats at water; however, scattering the antelope works out pretty well for rifle hunters.

By the time Tammy and I were done with my archery season, we were feeling very good about Jordan’s chances to find a quality buck. We estimated that we’d seen three to five bucks that would be knocking on the door of Boone and Crockett all-time. In retrospect, I have to remember however that I fully suck at scoring antelope on the hoof. I was unsure whether my son was making the right move when he put a hunt on and harvested an 89-inch buck, the third biggest killed in the entire US from 2016 to 2018 (luckily, my wife and son didn’t listen to me)!

Jordan’s Antelope Plan

Jordan and his pal Brandon had archery deer tags in central Nevada that they wanted to hunt, so he finally made his plan to hunt around the weekend of Labor Day. This was the end of his season and I was worried that some of the bigger bucks would have been killed, but I didn’t argue. After I had a few days to think about it, I started to realize that his decision to hunt late in the season would carry a massive benefit: low hunter density!

The plan was for Jordan to come from Reno on a Wednesday and get out to the hunting grounds on Thursday afternoon. My brother and Brandon would come with Jordan’s brother to be on the hunt starting Saturday. The plan seemed solid, as Jordan was willing to hunt seven days to get the speed goat he wanted. My wife and I take Labor Day weekend off to attend the county fair, so we decided we’d give up half of it and be in for Thursday through Saturday and let the guys all take it from there if the tag was then unfilled.

Day One – First Pronghorn?

The first day started as an afternoon three-truck convoy leaving pavement. This would allow my dad and Tammy and I to go home and ditch Jordan whenever it suited us, and also allow him to conserve fuel in the early phases of the hunt. As we reached the hunting country, Jordan spotted a nice buck south of the road at about 270 yards. Once I got my scope on him, I became pretty convinced the buck would score in the 82 to 84-inch range, making him a toad and very hard to pass up. This buck didn’t fit with my nephew’s plans to include his best friend, dad, and brother in the hunt, so he passed. I felt we could come back and find this goat, but still it is so hard to make the decision to leave-off in a situation like this.

We wandered around our area the rest of the evening, locating a fair number of mature bucks but sunset found us not having located a buck better than that first guy. We lined the trucks up on a flat ridge and made a cold camp in the backs of our trucks. As we were heading to bed, Jordan offered up that he wasn’t so sure he should have passed on the big buck. I assured him it would all work out fine, but I also had a nagging worry that maybe that would be the one buck we should have taken on “opening day”.

Day Two – No More Mr. Nice Guy

We awoke to spotting scopes full of nice bucks right from our beds. We were able to get close to one pretty darned nice buck, but none of us thought he compared to the one that had been passed the day before. So, with a few hours of hunting and spotting under our belts, we began the trek back to the lair of the big boy from day one.

Once we got to the location where the big guy got away, Tammy-with-the-eagle-eyes found a big buck lying about 1,000 yards away under a serviceberry bush. The heat waves were epic, and we couldn’t tell for certain if he was our buck, but we knew he was both mature and big. Jordan made the executive decision to stalk in on him in his bed and find out.

Stalking and Lessons Learned

The hunter quickly worked his way toward the buck while he dozed in the summer shade. As we watched, two Nevada game wardens came to investigate our intentions. As we visited with the game wardens Tammy and I switched back and forth between entertaining and spotting, keeping our eye on the buck. After the wardens left, Tammy watched the buck step out of his bed, stretch, and slowly graze away up the canyon and out of site. Jordan had a decision to make: whether to follow the buck or try to intercept him.

The hunter returned to the truck and we set a vehicular course to come out above the buck in the head of the canyon. Unfortunately, even when we got up there and could see what we thought was most of everything, we could not relocate that darned buck. Well, we hadn’t bumped him and antelope are fairly territorial day-to-day so we figured we could still come back and get him. Jordan was concerned he’d bumped the buck, but Tammy was nearly certain the big guy just lost his shade, got hot, and left to find a better bed.

Mr. Long-Prongs

After a midday lunch and some additional spotting, we wandered back closer to where we had dropped Jordan’s truck near the previous night’s camp. It was late afternoon when we found a really unique buck perched high on a bald hill with two does. This buck wasn’t real long, but he had some of the longest forks/prongs I had ever seen. It looked like he’d always be struggling not to stumble forward with all of that horn out over his nose. Despite the original vow to include his other teammates on the kill, I could see Jordan had thrown that idea out the window! This guy was focused on hunting and on working to fill his tag, and I was proud of his decision to make things happen.

We debated the angles a bit and ultimately Jordan chose to stalk over the rise below the buck. I knew this would get him very close but also feared that the shot wouldn’t present itself. My nephew still felt he’d bumped the morning buck and did not want to come up the draw from below. In the end he got within 70 yards of the bedded buck where he could just see the tops of his horns over the hill. Unfortunately, the does had bedded away from the buck and were across the draw looking straight at the hunter! We watched as Jordan put his rifle up, stood up, hunkered down, laid down, stood up (this went on for about 15 minutes), etc. but the does finally had their say and bolted. The buck jumped up and we still thought he was dead, but it turns out Jordan couldn’t see any of this due to the rise between them. The buck won this round as well, but we were getting obviously closer to getting this done with each new stalk.

Logistics Changes

We learned that both Ben and Brandon could not make it out on the hunt, so we elected to camp on a hill where we were certain to have cell coverage. I was able to communicate with my brother and to his credit he planned to meet me at the highway right after sunup. This meant him traveling for a couple of hours in the dark. This would allow us to look for the biggest buck before sunrise and also look over another big-buck area before I left to pick him up. It seemed like a sensible way to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat and let my brother enjoy hunting with his son.

In Part II, I’ll let you know what happened!