Method: Mathews Q2
Arrows: Carbon Express, NAP Thunderheads
Date: 8/18/2009 thru 8/21/2009
Camo: Realtree AP
Location: Casper, Wyoming
Conditions: Sunny, 83 degrees

The Cowboy state, a place where the high plains crashes into the mountains of the continental divide, where the deer and the antelope play and nothing says antelope, like the cactus, sage brush and the rolling hill ranches of Eastern Wyoming. A friend of mine invited me to go bow hunting for antelope on a private ranch and I jumped at the opportunity.

This was not exactly going to be a wilderness hunt, but we were going to be camping out on the treeless countryside just outside of Casper Wyoming. I am used to packing for your typical hunting trip, but packing for a week long hunting and camping trip involved much more thought, preparation and gear than I anticipated.

Our camp was set up right on the edge of our hunting grounds we were nestled into an area at the foot of the Laramie Mountains near the Platte River. The plan was to hunt the few water holes that were scattered over this 5000 acre ranch and if that was not working we would attempt to spot and stalk North Americas fastest land animal. The day we arrived, we set out to put up our pop-up blinds and spotted lots of great sign around the waterholes along with plenty of speed goats that could be seen up to a couple thousand yards away.

My first day sitting on a waterhole I had several Antelope come to the water, but none would commit to coming into bow range. They all seemed a little weary of my pop up blind. It was about 7:00pm that evening when a couple of does started coming into the water, they circled a couple of times and I guess were thirsty enough to come to the water. I shot the largest doe at 25 yards, a double lung shot. I watched as my first antelope fell a mere 50 yards from where I had shot her. I was happy to have meat for the freezer and excited about concentrating on shooting one of the many Pope and Young antelope that I had been seeing.

The next couple of days I had seen some nice bucks, but the opportunities were just not available for a good bow shot. It was not until the last day of the hunt. I was set up in a blind that we had named the Honey Hole because it had produced 4 out of the 6 bucks from our group. As the afternoon came and time was short, I told myself that I would shoot a buck if he had horns above his ears. Just then from behind the blind a buck had come to the water. He was standing 27 yards drinking out of the waterhole.

As the buck turned to leave, I drew my bow picked my spot and squeezed the release. As my Matthews Bow let the arrow fly, the buck had taken another step and the arrow went right through the Bucks paunch. It was a gut shot, I could not believe it. I watched as the Goat took off speeding over the prairie. He ran about 400 yards up over a small ridge with plenty of blood coming out from his wound. I knew the buck was seriously hurt and would probably bed down just over the ridge. I grabbed my gear and started to track this buck.

When I got to the top of the ridge, I spotted the buck bedded down on the top of the next ridge over, he was about 100 yards away. I figured I would sit tight, keep an eye on him and the buck would bleed out. After about 20 minutes. The buck stood up and disappeared over the hill. I quickly made my way to the spot where the buck was laying and spotted him again bedded down after traveling another 100 yards. I decided that this time I would put a stalk on him and try to get another arrow in him.

I got down on my stomach and started belly crawling through the cactus and snake infested sage brush, as slowly and quietly as I could. I was able to make it to a large sage bush ranged it to be 30 yards from the wounded goat. I knocked an arrow got to my knees, quickly drew and shot. This time I had hit my mark a double lung shot. The buck jumped out of his bed only to stumble about 20 yards before collapsing.

It had been a long 2 hours since I had first shot my buck. I felt a great relief after experiencing so many emotions, the excitement of the encounter, the thrill of the shot, the panic of a bad shot, the nervousness of losing an animal, the disappointment in myself, the compassion for the animal, and especially the anticipation of running into a prairie rattler while crawling through the brush. He was not the biggest buck, only 10 inches; it was not a great shot. But I was thrilled to have my first Antelope buck and especially to recover him. It was the last day of the hunt, and I had just tagged out.