Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 21, 2019, 03:49:00 PM
I booked with Chuck Cureton of Ridgemaster Outfitting outside of Kaycee, Wyoming. He had one spot open on his opening week of the season, and I didnt wanna go alone, so my buddy Dustin Newer said hed be more than happy to go with me, and even volunteered to drive the 15 hours it took for us to get from Southeast Oklahoma to Northcentral-ish wyoming.
Prep work began months in advance, as it does with any hunt that is further than 20 min away for me. My back and shoulder muscles had deconditioned in the past several years and I could no longer pull my bows that were my go-to hunting bows 5 years ago. It seemed 55# was about my limit now. Luckily, I had traded straight up Hoyt Buffalo for a 55@28 Great Plains B model Rio Bravo recurve, as a twin to one I've had for years that was 48#.
I knew I'd be probably sitting over water holes, so I knew Id need a good chair. The last chair I bought was one of the Double Bull blinds. It worked for half day sits, but everyone I talked to kept saying that the Millineum ground blind chair was the way to go. Pat Kelley (pdk25) told me that buying that chair is a decision I'd never regret, and there is nothing more true than that statement.
Because of work obligations, me and Dustin didnt get to leave for wyoming until about 11pm on August 13th. Except for a short nap on the Kansas/Nebraska border, we drive straight thru and made it to Chucks place near Kaycee, Wyoming around 4.30pm on the 14th. The next day was opening morning of the Wyoming archery antelope season.
The next morning I found myself in a blind overlooking a water tank in an area of rolling hills broken up by vast expanses of sagebrush flats. Coming from Southeast Oklahoma, with its rugged terrain and dense woods, I found this area beautiful. And the weather made it perfect. Back home, it was 98 degrees with an index of 110. But here...it was perfect at 75 degrees and a sleep inducing breeze coming thru the window of the blind.
At about 12.30pm, I began glassing the area to my south. At 400 yards, according to my rangefinder, a buck antelope stood on a ridge. He stood for 30 min, just staring my direction. I ate a packet of tuna. The one with beans and rice with hot sauce, then whittled my kids name into a chunk of cottonwood bark that I found the day before. An hour later, I glassed to the south again. The buck was now at 160 yards, and slowly grazing my way. When he was at 80 yards and directly to my east at the base of a bluff, I put an arrow on the string of my Great Plains recurve and pulled my neck gaiters up over my face, only revealing my eyes under the bill of my hat. I was as cool as the Fonz, and I knew I was gonna kill this antelope.
Then he bedded down in the shade of a pine tree. "Seriously, bro??" "You walked 400 yards for a shade tree??"
Ok let's see if I can post this pic successfully.
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 21, 2019, 04:24:00 PM
The antelope buck kept coming. 20 yards. 15 yards. At 12 yards, he changes course and instead of going straight to the water tank, he angles towards me, and keeps stepping. My heart went into A Fib. He wasn't supposed to do this. Hes now directly between me and the water tank, quartering towards me, giving me a terrible frontal angle shot. Not gonna take it. He stands there.
Hes Less. Than 6. Yards. Away. I smell him. And he doesnt smell delicious at all. Odd smell. Hard to describe. Not like the smell of a Spanish goat, but not as nasty as a dead chicken my coonhound rolled around on.
He makes a weird guttural sound. Like the sound I make just before throwing up after a heavy Cracker Barrel breakfast with that Sawmill Gravy. He burped up a little bit of cud and began chewing it.
His eyes are like shark eyes. Just black and soul-less. Cant tell if hes trying to look inside the blind or hes just surveying the wide open terrain past the blind. Suddenly, before I have time to draw my bow, he switches ends, and now had his butt towards me, walking towards the water tank. He walks around to the opposite side I need him to be on, gets a quick drink, then continues on past the tank, circles back around departs back down the basin from which he arrived from hours earlier. Last time I saw him, was on his ridge 400 yards away and he disappeared over it.
Then rest of the afternoon was eventless, but I was loving everything about it. I watched ravens, magpies and a few Merriams turkeys heading to roost as well as that same mulie doe graze 40 yds away.
Day 1 was over.
Post by: Crittergetter on August 21, 2019, 04:28:12 PM
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 21, 2019, 04:39:25 PM
Post by: arrow30 on August 21, 2019, 04:44:19 PM
Post by: Chumster on August 21, 2019, 06:19:13 PM
Post by: GCook on August 21, 2019, 06:28:17 PM
Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk
Post by: Charlie Lamb on August 21, 2019, 08:33:14 PM
Post by: Gator1 on August 21, 2019, 10:11:37 PM
Post by: pdk25 on August 21, 2019, 11:03:54 PM
Post by: Bisch on August 21, 2019, 11:10:54 PM
Bisch
Post by: rastaman on August 22, 2019, 09:41:22 AM
Post by: Soonerlongbow on August 22, 2019, 09:46:55 AM
Oklahoma boys!
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 22, 2019, 04:38:15 PM
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Back at the water tank. Calm, clear day, only thing moving was grasshoppers, and the occasional bird that flew in to get a quick drink at the tank. An occasional breeze blew thru the windows of the blind. Flies bit at my legs and I had begun to wish I had worn some pants instead of lightweight ripstop shorts. I had read a couple of magazines that I grabbed from the bathroom of the hunting cabin we were staying in, but I was starting to get bored. By 2:45, nothing moved. Not even the breeze. I needed a little bit of airflow, so I turned around and began to fiddlefart with the window flaps behind me. As I'm doing this, I'm thinking about how good a cold bottle of water from the my cooler would taste, along with something to snack on. So when I finished opening up the window I turn around and began to reach for my bag cooler and looked out the front window at the same time.
There he stood. The buck from the day before. He was like The Ghost and the Darkness. He just appeared directly in front of the blind at 8 yards.
Not only did I not have my bow in my hand, nor an arrow on the strong....but I didnt even have my tab on, yall. This buck had me dead to rights, and had caught me slipping! He had come from the only direction I hadnt expected. From the other side of then hill, directly behind the water tank.
I slowly slid my tab over my finger, picked up an arrow with one hand, and the bow with the other, and easily nocked an arrow and raised the bow up. The buck was again quartering towards me, but to my knowledge had not approached the tank to get a drink. He then took a few steps straight forward, and then stopped directly between me and the blind, at about 7 yards. I leveled the bow, picked a spot about halfway up his body and began my draw. The buck never twitched an ear. I hit anchor, held it for about 2 seconds while I burned a hole at that spot in his side.....then cut the arrow loose. My release felt good.
"WHAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!" went the sound of my top limb tip hitting the roof rod of the popup blind. I'm not sure who the sound scared more, me or the buck. But, I saw the shaft and my red/white fletchings bury into the shoulder of the antelope. And it looked like a pretty stellar hit!
The buck jumped forward when the arrow hit him, and he turned and lit off back down behind me like he was jet assisted. He reached the bottom of this little drainage in probably 3 seconds, the same drainage he took hours to cross the day before. When he reached the bottom of the drainage he stopped and turned towards me. He no longer had the arrow in him, and he seemed to be bleeding fairly well. He turned and slowly walked up the ridge of a finger that ran down into the drainage, reached the top of the finger, and bedded down in a patch of sagebrush. About 30 min later he stood up, turned around and laid back down. He was slow and wobbly as he did this. 30 min later he stood up, moved a little further down on the other side of the ridge, out of my sight.
I called Chuck and told him how everything had gone down. And that I could no longer see the buck but didnt feel like he dead yet. 30 min later, Chuck was up on the high ridge above me, glassing the antelope.
Close to nightfall, Chuck descended the bluff and met me at blind. Chuck said that the buck was not dead, looked like a fair hit, if not a little high. On the way out, we never saw the buck, so we figured he was laying in the sagebrush hiding, dead, or had managed to sneak out. Our plan was to back out, come back and start glassing in the morning until we found him, dead or otherwise.
The little drainage the buck ran into then managed to sneak out of.
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Post by: Soonerlongbow on August 22, 2019, 05:46:55 PM
Refresh....
Refresh....
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 22, 2019, 05:52:09 PM
Post by: Gator1 on August 22, 2019, 06:42:56 PM
Post by: Charlie Lamb on August 22, 2019, 07:40:58 PM
Post by: ron w on August 22, 2019, 07:56:17 PM
Post by: Soonerlongbow on August 22, 2019, 08:17:29 PM
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 22, 2019, 11:15:40 PM
I always read these hunting stories where guys would wound an animal while hunting, and then spend a "sleepless night" that night wondering where they went wrong. Or what they could have done differently at the shot. Wondering if their animal is laid up someplace licking its wound or getting disemboweled by coyotes. I had one of those nights that night. I couldnt sleep, but I was strangely optimistic.
The next morning me and Chuck headed out to look for my animal. We glassed and we walked. And glassed and glassed and glassed. I feel like I lived behind that pair of binoculars. If there was a high spot, we climbed it and glassed all of creation around it.
In the afternoon, Chuck put me in an area where antelope often cross from one big sage flat to another while he went and double checked some areas now that the sun had come out a little. The wind was howling, and snow had fallen in the Bighorns the night before and had cooled the temps off significantly. I was only slightly uncomfortable, as I was only in a T shirt, but a light weight hoodie would have been welcomed had I tossed it in my pack.
I sat watching this area, for several hours when at about 6pm, my phone starts buzzing. I pull it out of my pocket. Its Chuck. I hoped he had good news.
"I found your antelope. And I know its yours because theres dried blood down both sides. Hes bedded at the base of a cliff facing the wind. I'm gonna come get you, and see if we can get up above him so you can get another arrow into him. Meet me on the road."
I sat there in my little dugout blind thinking "Shooting from a cliff?? I dont even like standing on a chair to change a lightbulb."
10 minutes later. Chuck pulls up and I hop in. First words out of my mouth, " How high up are we talking here?" He says "I dont know...hard to tell from a mile away. But looks like 30 or 40 yards."
I sat there thinking to myself, "30 or 40 yards above a bedded antelope. 30 or 40 mph winds."
Chuck mustve seen it written all over my face. Then he said to me probably one of the biggest compliments I've ever heard:
"I've seen you shoot. I wouldnt have you do this if I didnt think you could do it. It just takes one arrow."
I sent a quick text to my wife on the ride over and told her about what was about to go down. All she replied with was "You got this, Cam"
Chuck shut the truck off and told me we'd be walking from this point on. I grab my pack and bow, slide my tab on, and we head off towards the rim.
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 23, 2019, 12:29:00 AM
Again, Chuck belly crawls to the edge, looks over, then backs up and rolls over on his back and gives me the Thumbs Up and whispers, "Raise up and kill him."
Sounds simple right? Raise up and kill him.
I began to step towards the edge as I raised up a little to see the antelope. As soon as his head came into view I froze. Afraid to move. I'd always been told that if you see an antelopes eyes, hes gonna see you.
"Kill him." Chuck whispered again.
At that moment, 3 feet from a 30+ plus yard drop, I was more afraid of being seen by this animal than falling to my death.
I took another slow step towards the rim, brought my bow up and bent at my waist as I drew my recurve slowly, and counting off my shot sequence.
I tend to be more accurate if I hold at anchor for about 2 seconds. Maybe more. But about half way thru my draw, the bucks head turns and looks up at me. I knew my release was gonna have to be touch and go this time. That buck wasnt gonna let me get away with a solid anchor. He didnt care about my accuracy.
As soon as I hit anchor, the string slipped off my tab. This was now a race between man-made creations of carbon and steel, and the fastest land mammal in North America; and 2nd fastest in the world.
In a split second the buck levitates up and forward as I watch my arrow descent towards him. I watch as my arrow disappears fletch and all into his ham as easily as youd push a toothpick into butter. My stomach suddenly feels like it had a huge rock in it. The buck does a 180 spin and heads the opposite way into the sage bowl. I lowered my bow arm and looked at Chuck.
I'm paraphrasing here. There was a lot more curse words involved, but basically I said "Chuck...I just shot him in the butt."
Chuck says "That's excellent! That's a great hit!"
I look back at the antelope and expected him to be out of sight, but the buck had slowed to a stop after only 40 yards, and stopped in a small gully. He turned slowly, revealing a huge patch of blood on his hindquarter, blood draining off his leg like it had been poured out of a bottle onto him. He wobbled, then collapsed. From me drawing the bow to the antelope falling over had taken less than 15 seconds.
I had always heard that the rear legs of antelope were so highly vascularized that even a small wound would result in massive blood loss.
My bow hit the dirt, and I grabbed Chuck up and bearhugged him. Then I sat down on the dirt and laid back with my face in my hands. Even right now I couldnt tell you what I was doing..but it was somewhere between maniacal laughter and a sob.
After I settled down, I told Chuck about all the stories I've read with guys like Chuck Adam's and Fred Asbell. Getting above bedded animals and either waiting for them to stand, or having to send an arrow down at steep angles in their beds. They made it sound so easy. Now I know what it's like to do that.
Hell, I just wanted to come to Wyoming and wouldve been happy to just shoot one at a water hole. Didnt have to get my fear of heights all involved.
The top of the cliff looking at the antelope way down there in a narrow gully. May be hard to see the antelope laying there, but the view was too nice to pass up a pic.
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Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 23, 2019, 12:35:20 AM
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Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 23, 2019, 12:51:55 AM
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Killed with a Great Plains B Model Rio Bravo recurve. 53@26"... pulling about 55#. Arrows are Easton Axis Focued Energy 400s with Ace 160 brosdheads and 75gr adapters.
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 23, 2019, 01:01:54 AM
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Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 23, 2019, 01:06:26 AM
Sorry I dragged this out yall. Hope you enjoyed the read as much as I did remembering it.
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Post by: Kopper1013 on August 23, 2019, 07:49:42 AM
Glad it all came together for you and good on the guide for being able to locate him!
Post by: Charlie Lamb on August 23, 2019, 08:35:49 AM
Post by: Gator1 on August 23, 2019, 08:51:09 AM
Thanks for the ride
Post by: KAZ on August 23, 2019, 09:33:57 AM
Well done, happy for you. Congratulations :jumper:
Post by: Tim Finley on August 23, 2019, 09:51:38 AM
I cant believe that hit did not kill him in seconds I've hit them close to there before and they died in just a few seconds .
Post by: Machino on August 23, 2019, 10:34:45 AM
That's a nice goat and a great story congrats .X2 Looks like you made a great shot. Thanks for the story. Great perseverance! Congratulations
I cant believe that hit did not kill him in seconds I've hit them close to there before and they died in just a few seconds .
Post by: Bisch on August 23, 2019, 10:44:20 AM
Congrats on a great antelope!!!
Bisch
Post by: Caddo on August 23, 2019, 11:46:09 AM
Headed out with Bisch in a week, certainly some lessons learned here!
LD
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 23, 2019, 11:50:48 AM
What an awesome tale!!!! I can’t believe that first shot didn’t do him in!!! I leave a week from today for WY.
Congrats on a great antelope!!!
Bisch
Thanks man! You and Caddo are gonna kill. If I had to offer any advice for shot placement, go further back than I did! Haha!
Post by: GCook on August 23, 2019, 11:52:10 AM
Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on August 23, 2019, 12:01:48 PM
Awesome story buddy. And a beautiful buck. I look forward to your next story. :clapper:
Thank you Charlie. It was great to relive it again. This hunt has lit the fire on for traditional bowhunting for me again. Hope i I can continue to have success!
Post by: Mike Gerardi on August 23, 2019, 12:25:06 PM
Post by: South MS Bowhunter on August 23, 2019, 01:14:06 PM
Anybody have a handy pic of the goats anatomy?
Post by: supernaut on August 23, 2019, 03:53:23 PM
Post by: BuckeyeGuy on August 23, 2019, 07:21:24 PM
Post by: Ray Lyon on August 23, 2019, 09:36:53 PM
Post by: SlowBowKing on August 23, 2019, 10:27:34 PM
Post by: MnFn on August 23, 2019, 11:35:06 PM
I’d love to take a antelope some day.
Post by: hybridbow hunter on August 24, 2019, 11:30:08 AM
Post by: stickandstring on August 24, 2019, 12:46:54 PM
Post by: SAM E. STEPHENS on August 24, 2019, 02:20:12 PM
Congrats sir...
,,,Sam,,,
Post by: BowMIke on August 24, 2019, 02:27:58 PM
Well told story and and enjoyable to read. Thanks for sharing with us. . Great animal!
BowMike
Post by: rastaman on August 24, 2019, 02:39:29 PM
Post by: elkken on August 25, 2019, 02:07:33 PM
Post by: Soonerlongbow on August 25, 2019, 02:23:44 PM
Post by: Over&Under on August 27, 2019, 06:39:20 PM
Post by: Carcajou on August 29, 2019, 08:56:37 AM
Post by: razorsharptokill on December 10, 2019, 03:18:41 PM
Post by: Car54 on December 10, 2019, 03:58:48 PM
Post by: Wudstix on December 10, 2019, 04:45:14 PM
Post by: Wudstix on December 10, 2019, 04:46:34 PM
Post by: fmscan on December 10, 2019, 05:45:39 PM
Post by: Phillip Fields on December 11, 2019, 04:32:04 PM
Post by: Holm-Made on December 12, 2019, 07:36:07 PM
On a second note, you referenced the smell of an antelope buck. For some odd reason, it is one of my favorite smells in the world. I just love it.
Congrats.
Post by: The Vanilla Gorilla on December 12, 2019, 11:15:25 PM
Great looking pronghorn, and a great write-up. I believe Me and my wife Nancy met you on a pig/javelina hunt outside of Crane, TX back about 2010.
Yes sir, I remember. I believe you had a fella named Donnie with you that helped me look for a javelina I shot. I hunted that ranch 2 years in a row. Considering going back soon.
Thanks everyone! I'll post pics when I get the mount back sometime next year.
Post by: Phillip Fields on December 13, 2019, 09:13:06 AM
Great looking pronghorn, and a great write-up. I believe Me and my wife Nancy met you on a pig/javelina hunt outside of Crane, TX back about 2010.
Yes sir, I remember. I believe you had a fella named Donnie with you that helped me look for a javelina I shot. I hunted that ranch 2 years in a row. Considering going back soon.
Thanks everyone! I'll post pics when I get the mount back sometime next year.
Yep, Donnie was with us. I haven't been back to that ranch but I've hunted javelina/pigs several times since then, I have a hunt scheduled near Pearsall Texas in February.
Post by: Blaino on December 13, 2019, 10:07:16 AM
Post by: Wudstix on December 13, 2019, 10:51:28 AM
Post by: twitchstick on December 16, 2019, 08:26:55 AM