king' s outdoor world - Index

king' s outdoor world - Hunting Illustrated April/May 2008 - Index

The author fulfi lled one
of her dreams with this
80 6/8 B&C pronghorn
anticipation of shooting an antelope
was eating away at me. Since we
didn’t see much on our early scouting
trip, I wasn’t holding out for a huge
one, but just a decent one. So we
loaded up Jimmy’s camper trailer
and went hunting.
As we neared our campsite
the evening before the season
started, our spirits were greatly
uplifted. There were antelope all
over the place! I’m sure you can
imagine how much sleep we all got that
night. The next morning, we were up
and dressed way before daylight. We
decided to head to a spot where we had
seen quite a few bucks the night before.
We were pretty excited to see that they
were still there and bedded down; but,
as shooting light neared, we didn’t see
anything that really made our eyes pop.
I know, I know, I said I’d settle for a
decent one, but this was opening day
and I had a week to hunt. I decided to
wait. As the morning progressed, we
drove around and scoped things out.
We saw a lot of antelope but no real
shooters. Noon was now upon us so
we headed back to the camper for a
snack and to re-evaluate our map.
We decided to try a
different area. When we got there
it seemed that a few other guys had
the same idea but the area was big
enough for all of us. We were only
there for a few minutes when we
spotted a herd moving slowly across
a ridgeline. Brian threw up his
Swavorski binoculars and said there
was a shooter in the bunch. About
that time, the herd took off running
and then we heard the boom of a
shot. Someone at the bottom of the
ridge had taken a shot at one of the
bucks in the group but missed. We
decided that we would try to head
the group off, but we would have
to act fast. We drove a short way
and then jumped out and ran out
to where we thought the antelope
would cross the road. We were right,
but they were coming at us at a dead
run. Now for an antelope a dead run
is really fast and extremely hard
to shoot. So, we just bent down
and watched them run by us. I was
April/May 57