My daughter and I just got back from Colorado where she had drawn a tag for 6 units near Colorado Springs for buck antelope.
This was going to be my daughters 1st trip out west to hunt and my 1st time to go after antelope on my own.
She drew muzzleloader and in Colorado no scope is allowed so not only are we going to have to learn how to shoot a new type of gun but she is also going to
have to learn to shoot open sights.
Fast forward to the hunt. We drove up Sunday and stopped by the areas we had to hunt to get a jump start on scouting in the morning. I had found 4 pieces of trust land to hunt on but we were just going to target 2 of the closest to our hotel. We had a 10k acre tract and a 50k tract of land available to hunt.
Plan was to start out at the closest spot to our hotel and then check parking spots along the way and target pronghorn closer to the road. At every stop we found at least a pronghorn. We passed on one young buck and had 2 other blown stalks at the 1st 3 parking areas.
At our 4 stop of the morning we are learning a bunch and we quickly realize this is going to be tough to accomplish. I even stated if this doesn’t work we may end up having to sit water. My daughter and I love to stalk and hunt aggressively so the thought of sitting water was a boring idea to us.
We spot 2 bucks in the corner of the property and start our stalk. I thought I had a good plan but things did not go as planned.
We went light and only took a decoy, gun, and shooting sticks. We were going to stay in a ditch that crossed the property and pop out the top and cut off the feeding bucks. Well we were able to get into position about 450 yards away from them but they never fed our way they just stood there.
We had no choice if we wanted to get one of these to belly crawl the entire way. My daughter had no idea what she was getting herself into.
It took us a little over 2 hours to cover 310 yards and get to 140 yards. This was really further than we wanted to shoot but she was exhausted and bruised and scratched up from crawling over all the rocks, cactus and grass.
We both sat up and I put up the tripod. She steadied her aim and slowly squeezed the trigger. Click. Nothing.
Oh crud. I grab the muzzleloader and ask her for another cap and replaced the one on it. The pronghorn stayed calm. She was able to take a second to aim again and this time the gun fired. The pronghorn dropped in his tracks and our 1st hunt out west together was over!!!
I am over the moon about the entire trip. We made the most of our time and went to Pike’s Peak and Garden of the Gods while we were there. I’ll post a bunch of pics.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This was going to be my daughters 1st trip out west to hunt and my 1st time to go after antelope on my own.
She drew muzzleloader and in Colorado no scope is allowed so not only are we going to have to learn how to shoot a new type of gun but she is also going to
have to learn to shoot open sights.
Fast forward to the hunt. We drove up Sunday and stopped by the areas we had to hunt to get a jump start on scouting in the morning. I had found 4 pieces of trust land to hunt on but we were just going to target 2 of the closest to our hotel. We had a 10k acre tract and a 50k tract of land available to hunt.
Plan was to start out at the closest spot to our hotel and then check parking spots along the way and target pronghorn closer to the road. At every stop we found at least a pronghorn. We passed on one young buck and had 2 other blown stalks at the 1st 3 parking areas.
At our 4 stop of the morning we are learning a bunch and we quickly realize this is going to be tough to accomplish. I even stated if this doesn’t work we may end up having to sit water. My daughter and I love to stalk and hunt aggressively so the thought of sitting water was a boring idea to us.
We spot 2 bucks in the corner of the property and start our stalk. I thought I had a good plan but things did not go as planned.
We went light and only took a decoy, gun, and shooting sticks. We were going to stay in a ditch that crossed the property and pop out the top and cut off the feeding bucks. Well we were able to get into position about 450 yards away from them but they never fed our way they just stood there.
We had no choice if we wanted to get one of these to belly crawl the entire way. My daughter had no idea what she was getting herself into.
It took us a little over 2 hours to cover 310 yards and get to 140 yards. This was really further than we wanted to shoot but she was exhausted and bruised and scratched up from crawling over all the rocks, cactus and grass.
We both sat up and I put up the tripod. She steadied her aim and slowly squeezed the trigger. Click. Nothing.
Oh crud. I grab the muzzleloader and ask her for another cap and replaced the one on it. The pronghorn stayed calm. She was able to take a second to aim again and this time the gun fired. The pronghorn dropped in his tracks and our 1st hunt out west together was over!!!
I am over the moon about the entire trip. We made the most of our time and went to Pike’s Peak and Garden of the Gods while we were there. I’ll post a bunch of pics.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
love the smiles!
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