Record Book Pronghorn- Part 2

Monster Nevada Pronghorn and a jubilant hunter!

So my wife had taken a beautiful pronghorn in 2015 (see Part 1 of this article) and we decided this area would be our new family “go-to” choice for antelope tags. Lucky boy that my adult son is, he happened to draw the same tag in 2016. My wife and I were stoked, and we set up a June scouting trip, knowing exactly where we wanted to focus, from the previous year.

We camped out on our scouting trip and just before we started to set up evening camp, my wife found a lone buck antelope about 1,000 yards from the truck, in the same drainage she’d killed her buck the prior year. We watched this guy for about 15 to 20 minutes through my big Swarovski HD and it was clear to both of us this buck was a very big boy. We pulled into our sleeping bags, excitedly chattering about the buck and hoping we could find him again in the morning.

My patient wife had found a nice buck with a pile of does.

It must be something to do with age, but for the life of me I can’t remember if we saw that buck the next morning or not. I don’t think we did, but anyway we headed home, scouting country as we went. We found nothing else anywhere near the class of the big buck we’d seen the evening before, so we had a pretty good vision for the area of our focus.

When we got home, I immediately jumped on Google Earth ™ and ESRI’s ARCGIS program to try to figure out more about where this buck might be feeding and watering in the area. In so doing, I found a spring about one mile south of where we last saw him, and well-concealed from most hunters. I expect a very few hunters and the local rancher are the only folks who know about this spring.

As season approached, my son indicated he would make sure to get three days off to hunt. I figured we would be ok with this. After all, this is antelope, not sheep or elk hunting. No problem. Opening weekend came and went, with no sign of my son. While that is true, he had committed to the 300 mile trip to come up for the next weekend, so we were in business.

My son arrived very late the night before the hunt, so we opted to let him sleep in and leave on the 3-hour trip mid-morning to hunt the first afternoon. We found some antelope on the way to our big-buck spot, but nothing worth taking on his opening day. I had this bright idea to hike into the desert spring and wait for the big boy to come see us. So we took one truck and my wife took the other, and my son and I parked and hiked into the spring area.

We saw cows. Lots of cows. No elk. No deer. No antelope. Well, we did see some antelope way off in the heat waves a mile or so above the spring. After about four hours of fruitless sitting in the summer heat, my son decided to take the goat by the horns and hike the three miles between us and my wife, toward where we last saw the antelope on the horizon.

En route, we found a group of antelope that had a nice mature buck with them. We debated for about 5 minutes, when one of the does figured us out. My son decided then to take the buck and got ready for the shot. I waited for the “boom”. He cussed. I wondered. He cussed again. His gun wouldn’t chamber a round. I figured maybe something was wrong, so started tinkering with it. Nothing. I finally wormed my finger into the chamber only to find a piece of sagebrush lodged in the receiver that wouldn’t allow the bolt to close. With my knife I fixed it, but by then the antelope was gone and my son was frustrated. God smiled.

We continued on and happened upon the antelope we’d seen earlier. It was four bucks, one tiny one, two mature ones, and one with a freak horn. We debated taking one of them for about 15 minutes, but in the end, my son passed. We knew the other half of our team would have found plenty of goats, so he hiked the rest of the way to them, while I hiked back to the truck to drive to the meet-up.

The girls reported having seen exactly squat. I was shocked, as the prior year that country had been brimming with speed-goats. With sun behind the hills, we stood and debated with ourselves. Having not seen the big boy, and having only seen the five bucks in that location that day, should we roll the dice and stay here or should we move on to a place we knew contained a lot more antelope? My son had only the full next day to hunt and wanted to be home the following morning, so the three days had shrunk to 1.5. I’d say we debated for about 45 minutes and to my son’s credit, he swung for the fence. We stayed.

We set up a quick dry camp, ate some food, and made our beds in the backs of the two trucks. The plan would be for my wife, son, and me to get up in the dark and drive to the top of the best lookout hill in the area, and see if we could find a nice buck to hunt. As planned, which is basically how we roll, we were on that hilltop about 15 minutes before legal shooting light. We glassed and spotted for about 20 minutes, seeing nothing. I mean NOTHING. I started to get impatient, grabbing a granola bar and fiddling around with my gear, when my wife said “there he is.” There who is?

My patient wife had found a nice buck with a pile of does. She looked. I looked. My son looked. I looked again. I could tell the buck was nice, but I wasn’t quite sure he was “the one”. My wife disagreed. She felt he was the big boy we were looking for. I argued, but then I’m known to misjudge antelope. My son made the decision, “let’s go get him.” Thus directed, I started preparing for the stalk, which means I threw my fully-loaded pack on my back and started walking pretty much as the words left his mouth. I knew time was not our friend, once the decision was made.

My son and I dropped quickly off of the hill we were on, leaving my wife to watch. We had about 900 yards to cover, with the first 200 or so in plain sight. We use camouflage clothing and this matters at these times. We also took advantage of them cresting a small rise and dropping into the next small draw… meaning we hauled ass. We made it down until we were going to drop out of sight from the draw. I stopped and found the antelope coming out onto an open slope, slowly grazing away from us, but milling also. We dropped out of sight and then we really hauled ass, jogging the next 400 or so yards, closing to within about 350 or 400 yards of where we knew them to be.

One final climb of the ridge that stood between us was all that was left. We’d played it perfectly, and the wind was our friend. We took a moment to catch our breath. I let my son lead, and we began our 150 yard climb. When we neared the top, I lagged even further. At this point, I was no longer any help…only a hindrance, so I let my son finish the hunt his way. He snuck to the crest of the hill and quickly pointed to me, his eyes, and the slope across from us. He had them. He backed away below the crest and circled a small nob about 40 yards to my left before cresting back over on the side with the antelope. I ranged the hillside and gave him the info as he passed by me.

I watched him sit for the shot. I watched him prepare. He lifted his head. He lowered his head. He lifted his head. I plugged my ears. He lowered his head. I waited. Then, a single shot, startling to me even though I was prepared. He chambered another round and lowered his head again…and sat. I couldn’t see what was happening, other than I saw the herd running over the next rise. Through my binoculars, I could not account for the buck as they left. My son got up and waved at me to come to him.  As I did, I could see the antelope laying 280 yards across the draw from him. I prayed it was the right one.

Morning Light, End of Hunt

When we got to that antelope, I could tell he was actually pretty darned big. The more we worked on the cape and boning the meat, the more I liked the looks of him. He got bigger with every passing second. We took pictures of my son and his goat, of the antelope alone, of the horns protruding from the pack, and I took more of him packing his animal out of there. It was surreal for me, even after participating in dozens even scores of kills like this, I knew that this was my son’s hunt and I’d played only a supporting role. He had finished the hunt without any help from me, the way he should, and he had clearly killed a trophy buck.

We enjoyed a morning beer to celebrate the success (traditions die hard), and had a quick brunch to send us on our way back home. When I got home, I ran straight for my tape and my computer. My son and I scored that antelope, and I generated a green score of 87 inches and change! I was ecstatic! We knew this was a lifetime trophy and a truly huge antelope, but I could barely wait the 60 days for the drying period to finish. I dreaded that the scorer would steal back two or three inches by the time the horns had shrunk.

We convened at the Boone and Crockett scorer’s house in Reno two months later, me filled with anticipation and dread. All I wanted was for this guy to make Boone and Crockett, and I said as much. The scorer raised an eyebrow at me. He said, “that isn’t going to be a problem. I’m pretty sure this is the biggest buck killed in Nevada this year. I haven’t heard of one bigger.” Imagine my surprise when the official score came out to be 89 0/8 inches net. I was amazed and a little embarrassed at my own scoring prowess…these animals don’t grow during the drying period, meaning I’d made some real mistakes in my measurements.

Anyway, to end my tale, this buck was the 14^th biggest B&C killed all-time in Nevada (tie), and the largest ever recorded in Elko County, Nevada. My son did indeed win the Kit Carson buckle for largest antelope killed in the state in 2016, something his father accomplished with his 228 1/8 net mule deer 5 years earlier. Looking back, I’m pretty darned sure this is the big buck my wife and I saw the year before but failed to find a second time during her season. Persistence paid off for us, and the result is another memorable hunt indelibly etched into the old gray matter. This is something my wife, son, and I will share until the days we die.

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