Bowhunting Magazine and Archery Tips » Antelope Hunting

Where The Antelope Play

edersbow.com — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:55:45 +0000

Taking A Pronghorn Is One Of Bowhunting’s Greatest Challenges, But Armed With A Few Key Tactics, You’ll Take The Speedsters Down. By Judd Cooney

Bowhunting pronghorn antelope is an adventure of patience and perseverence from start to finish. From the time you start pouring over maps and literature trying to locate the very best area to bowhunt these beautiful, prairie speedsters, to choosing a blind location and making it look like part of the environment, to the final “moment of truth” when you release an arrow at a record class buck, your greatest asset is going to be PATIENCE!

Pronghorn bowhunting opportunities have never been better. There are more pronghorns roaming the prairies of the west, at present, than at any time in history and all of the antelope producing states have liberal bowhunting seasons.

There are more pronghorns roaming the prairies of the west, at present, than at any time in history.

Without question the top pronghorn state is Wyoming with some 70,000 total licenses available to hunters. Montana with 29,000 licenses and Colorado with 13,000 licenses also provide plenty of quality antelope bowhunting. During the 1995-96 recording period for Pope & Young, Wyoming produced the most record class pronghorns with 248 entries, followed by Colorado with 127 and Montana with 54 entries. However, six of the top ten including the top FOUR were shot in Arizona with New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming and Alberta posting one each. Be patient, do your research and choose a pronghorn hunting area that best fills your fantasies. Contact the state agencies, local ranchers, wildlife personnel and sporting goods stores for further detailed information on your specific hunting area.

Most antelope reside in semi-arid prairie or desert with minimal ground vegetation and mile after mile of open country. With their acute vision and awesome speed, (70 mph top speed and 30-40 mph on cruise) they can be difficult to approach within bow range and even tougher to hit once you get close. If a pronghorn is watching you, your chances of hitting him with an arrow are slim and none. A pronghorn’s reaction time and speed make a whitetail or mule deer look like they’re moving in slow motion.
The Stake-Out

Pit or ground blinds may help keep your scent down, but best of all they hide you from the big eyes of the pronghorn.

The wide, open spaces and dry country that make pronghorns tough to stalk successfully, usually has a limited supply of one ingredient that allows serious bowhunters to position themselves where the antelope will come to them, and that’s WATER! Roughly 50% of the pronghorns entered in the record book are taken from ground blinds, which means a blind overlooking a water source. A waterhole during the dry, hot, summer and early fall is the center of the pronghorns universe.

Unlike other big game animals, pronghorns don’t move much at night. They’ll be up and about at first light and start feeding their way toward the nearest waterhole which may be 3 miles or more away. The most active time on a waterhole during warm weather is from 7:00 to 12:00 noon and again from about 4:00 to 7:00 in the evening. If the weather is scorching hot antelope will often loaf around a waterhole for several hours watering several times before meandering off. Pronghorn bucks are extremely territorial and will chase a buck encroaching on their stomping ground with extreme prejudice. However, waterholes seem to be a “neutral ground” where rival bucks not only tolerate each other but water side by side.

It’s easy to spot the blind of a neophyte pronghorn hunter. They expend a minimum of effort digging a shallow pit and building a front wall of brush to hide behind. They may get lots of shots at running antelope but their chances of picking and choosing a record class pronghorn of their choice and then making a clean shot are slim indeed! A shovel and pickaxe are your best weapons for waterhole blind hunting for pronghorn. The more time and effort you expend on a proper blind the luckier you’ll get. Choose a location on the waterhole where you can cover the most heavily utilized section of the shoreline as evidenced by fresh sign.

Antelope or antilocapra americana usually weigh less than 110 pounds. If you want a trophy make sure the paddles are above the

Antelope depend mainly on their keen eyesight and speed to keep them out of trouble but their sense of smell is as good as any other big game animal, so keep the prevailing breeze in mind when picking a blind location. I much prefer a pit blind and will put one in where there isn’t a leaf of cover around it and get immediate results. I dig the pit portion 6′ long x 6′ wide x 3′ deep and carve a bench seat along the back side of the pit. I then use 4′ x 3/8″ rebar rods at intervals along the back, sides and front of the pit strung with a single strand of baling wire to hold up the brush and keep it from leaving the vicinity with the prairie winds. I generally put two shooting lanes in the front to cover as much area as possible. By leaning the rods toward the center of the pit I can cover most of the top with tumbleweeds or camo netting to darken the inside of the blind. Wearing camo, face paint or a headnet to blend with the shadows or darkness eliminates any chance of the nearby “goats” spotting movement. It also makes for a cool, comfortable wait even under the hot mid- day sun. A good pocket novel will help pass the time, keep you from dozing off and maybe missing that buck of a lifetime.

Pronghorns can drive a bowhunter crazy on a waterhole! They normally HATE coming to water ’cause they instinctively realize their vulnerability at this point. They’ll choose a flat, muddy waterhole in the open where they can see, over a cold, clear, spring in the bottom of a wash where they can’t observe their surroundings. Quite often they’ll come within sight of the waterhole, then mill and browse an hour or two within sight of the waiting hunter. Not good for a bowhunter’s mental state, specially if one or more of them happen to be a monster buck.

When the antelope do get to water, BE PATIENT! Don’t rush your shot! Normally a pronghorn coming to drink will stick its nose in the water then jerk it’s head up to look around. They may do this several times before settling down for a long drink. I once timed a buck that drank for four minutes without raising his head, but it took him two hours to cover the last 200 yards to water. Be patient, wait for the right shot and make it count.

Placing The Shot

Antelope were designed for bowhunters and putting an arrow behind the shoulder on the distinct line where the white belly hair meets the brown back hair results in a downed pronghorn in short order. You’re hunting open country where visibility isn’t a problem so keep that hit pronghorn in sight after your shot. Once you determine the exact hit you can plan a course of action. A bowhunter should NEVER lose a hit pronghorn unless it is of the most superficial type and even then some of these can be turned into a trophy on the wall with a little persistence.

Spot ‘N’ Stalk

The author, with a trophy Antelope believes that one of the best ways to take a

Successfully stalking and killing a pronghorn with a bow and arrow is the epitome of the bowhunting challenge and can be accomplished in the right country where there is sufficient cover for a stalk. The key to this type of hunting is locating the animal of your choice before it spots you. This venture requires the best optics you can afford in the form of good binoculars from 7-10X and a spotting scope for judging the trophy qualities of the buck and planning your stalking route with finite precision and detail. Here again patience and persistence is of extreme importance in executing a successful stalk. You may have to spend hours or maybe even days glassing and waiting for the buck of your dreams to get in proper position for a successful stalk. Get impatient and try to push the envelope and all you’ll get is a look at the south end of an antelope buck headed north! Remember, keep the wind in your face, the sun at your back and luck at your side and you just might get a shot. ‘Course then all you have to do is worry about hitting the critter before he sees the arrow coming.

Decoying pronghorns is becoming more popular each season and if you’re looking for plenty of unmitigated action and plan on bowhunting pronghorns during the peak of the rut, about mid-September, give decoying a try. As I stated earlier, pronghorn bucks during the rut are extremely aggressive and territorial and will put the run on any buck that crosses into their domain or approaches their harem of does. To be effective a high percent of the time you should be within 200 yards of a herd buck before you pop up your decoy. Here again good glassing technique and the patience to wait for just the right opportunity will greatly increase your chances of success. Utilizing the “buddy” system for decoy hunting is a much more effective than going it alone ’cause the action can be immediate when you pop up the decoy and an agitated buck can cover that 200 yards in something less that 10 seconds. This doesn’t give a lone bowhunter much time to set the decoy and get ready for the shot. One hunter manning the decoy while the other takes the shot is much more effective. Making a good shot on a buck charging at 50 mph isn’t the easiest thing in the world to accomplish under the best of conditions. The more variables you take out of the hunt the better your chances of putting it all together and making a clean kill.

Regardless of where or how you plan to bowhunt the unique pronghorn antelope, you’re in for one of the most challenging and exciting ventures of your bowhunting career.

Trickery For Trophy Pronghorns

edersbow.com — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:28:16 +0000

The Biggest Lopes Are The Hardest To Hunt But They Have a Weakness…They’re Territorial. Here’s How To Capitailize On That Fact. By Tom Tietz

As the buck disappeared over the barren hill, I grabbed my bow and sprinted the 400 or so yards to the base of the hill. With a brisk prairie wind in my face, the final stalk began. Hopefully the big guy would be just over the crest of the hill, in easy bow range. As I neared the crest I knocked my arrow, tipped with a 125-grain Thunderhead.

It was late August and I was hunting pronghorn antelope in northwest Colorado. Although I’ve taken numerous pronghorns, most of them exceeding P&Y minimums, the real whoppers had always eluded me. Not that they weren’t there, they just never ended up with my tag attached. Hopefully that was soon to change. After four long years of applying unsuccessfully, I had finally accumulated enough preference points to draw Colorado’s area 2. The toughest archery antelope tag to draw in the state.

Typically, the best method for hunting antelope is over a water hole, but the author decided to change tactics.

This unit, situated in far northwest corner of the state, is well known for producing better than average antelope. The only drawback is drawing a license. With very few tags and hundreds of applicants, the odds are stacked against all but the persistent applicant. But fortunately Colorado has a preference point system that rewards regular applicants by giving them one preference point for each year they are unsuccessful in the draw. These points are for a particular species. The weapon, unit and season applied for can be changed. I had 4 points when my permit finally came through.

With one exception, all my previous antelope were taken by spotting and stalking. The exception was a nice buck I took from a blind near a waterhole, the preferred method of most archers. This hunt would be a little different. I wanted it all, take an exceptional buck, but in a unique and exciting way. Although waterhole hunting is far and away the most effective method for taking pronghorn, it can also be the least exciting, in fact downright boring method. At least that’s this writers opinion.

Stalking, on the other hand, is very exciting, but can be a very frustrating and not so often successful method. Even though this is my favorite, and I’d taken several nice bucks this way, I just wasn’t able to score on the real big guys.

Another method, which is growing in popularity, is decoying. Although I had never tried it, it seemed like a super exciting way to hunt antelope with a bow. Just locate the territory of a good buck, set up the decoy, blow on an antelope call and watch out. The drawback here, is that it is most effective during the rut which was still a couple weeks away. Oh what to do.

The Ultimate Strategy

Here a bowhunter hides behind a decoy. The author has found that hiding about 40 yards to the side of the decoy is the best plan of attack.

Then a light came on. Why not incorporate the use of a decoy into stalking and see what happens. Although I was definitely entering into uncharted territory, the challenge was intriguing. I had to give it a shot. My game plan would be to locate an exceptional buck one day and just watch him and learn his territory. Then in the pre-dawn darkness the nest morning, set the decoy in an area suitable to stalking, getting back a couple hundred yards and wait. If and when the buck would see the decoy, hopefully his curiosity would bring him in to the decoy. As his attention was focused on the decoy, I could stalk him. Sounds good on paper, but would it work in the real world. I couldn’t wait to find out.

That summer I acquired a Flambeau antelope decoy and read up on how to use it. A scouting trip in late July familiarized me with the area. During my scouting I was able to locate several exceptional bucks. One buck in particular, was the largest antelope I’d ever seen. His horns were an easy 16 inches with incredibly heavy bases and prongs that made him look like a forkhorn mule deer. The basin he resided in was also home to several other very good bucks. Guess where I decided to concentrate my hunting efforts?

Late August saw my Toyota 4×4 pickup heading for the high deserts of northwest Colorado, bow and decoy in hand. After a five hour drive I finally arrived at my predetermined campsite. Out in the middle of a sagebrush desert, it wasn’t very scenic, but it was adequate.

The season was already 2 weeks old, so that afternoon I donned my camo, grabbed bow and decoy and headed down the dusty two track road into what I nicknamed the “valley of the pronghorn”. The search was a short one. Withing minutes my Swarovski AT-80 spotting scope was filled with antelope. This place was really target rich. Half a mile east was a herd of twenty to thirty does and fawns, flanked by not one, not two, but four nice bucks, all 14 to 15 inchers. A great way to start, but none of these bucks held a candle to the big boys I saw in July. The best one would probably score in the mid 70′s. Maybe later.

A few miles of bouncing along the dry, dusty track, they call a road in those parts, my excitement hit cardiac levels. Not 100 yards off the road was big boy. He was working his way along a deep draw, choked with 3 foot high sagebrush, totally unaware he was being observed by a drooling hunter in a dusty truck. Not to mention the fact that a 15 mile an hour wind was blowing from him to me. I carefully backed the truck over a small rise until I was out of sight, parked and the stalk was on.

Even though a straight stalk wasn’t what I had planned on, this was to good to pass up. By the time I worked myself into the draw, the buck was about 300 yards away, but still within 20 yards of the draw and unaware. All I had to do is slip up the wash the 300 yards or so to the buck, find an opening through the sage and my tag would be filled with an easy 20 yard shot. Ya right! Old Murphy was working that hot August afternoon. When I got to where the buck should be, he was no where to be found. As hard as I tried, all my 10×42’s could find was miles of sagebrush. Frustrated that a big buck gave me the slip again, I stood up out of cover of the sage, only to have the surprise of my life. The old black faced trophy blew out of a shallow depression where he had bedded, not 15 yards away. Boy, did I feel like the “great white hunter” at that moment. I’m sure glad there weren’t any witnesses, I felt stupid enough. Make a perfect stalk on the buck of a lifetime and then blow it just as perfectly.

The Great Fake Out

A decoy lured this 80+ Antelope right to the author.

Dejectedly, I made the now long walk back to the truck. As the sun set in a ball of fire to the west, antelope began popping up everywhere. Although I was unable to relocate big boy, I did find a real nice buck along the edge of some sand hills at the south end of the same basin. He was a better than average buck with heavy horns about 15 inches in length, and excellent prongs. He’d do. The next day was spent trying to get on him, but without success. Time to try my decoy technique. He was spending the late evening and early morning hours out on the sage flats,chasing does and then just after sunrise he retired to the cover of the sand hills. My plan was to set up in the sand hills before daylight and see what happens.

Sleep came tough that night, as I replayed every possible scenario. Startled by that obnoxious invention called an alarm clock, I gulped down a quick cup of coffee and readied my equipment. Loading the decoy in my truck, I donned my camo, sprayed down with Scent Shield and headed out into the darkness. Arriving near the sand hills, I placed the decoy on a low hill and backed off a couple hundred yards and awaited daylight.

Daybreak came without fanfare, but just as the sun popped over the horizon, things began to happen. The buck was heading across the sage flat, almost straight toward my position. At about 500 yards he suddenly froze and stared directly at the intruder on the hill tail flared in an alarm pose. This seemed to go on for hours, probably 5 minutes, and curiosity finally got the best of him. Slowly he approached to within 100 yards of the decoy, snorting as he closed the distance. He moved in a little closer then began circling it. That’s where we began.

Keeping a small clump of sage in front, I eased over the crest on my belly. Not only was he there, he was close. About 25 yards! Backing off slightly, I rose into a low crouch, drew my Bear T/D Hunter and took one step forward. With his attention focused on the decoy, about 50 yards to my right, I aimed at his sweet spot and released. You can imagine his surprise when the arrow hit home. Within a few seconds it was over. My dream became reality as I stood over my trophy buck. I love it when a plan comes together.

The experience reinforced my belief theat you can use a variety of proven tactics in unique ways, and still be successful. This pronghorn was taken by combining two proven techniques to fool a wise old trophy. Mixing techniques, or doing unothodox things doesn’t always work, but never fails to provide excitement. And that’s what it’s all about anyways. If using the same tactics all the time gets a bit mundane, try mixing it up a little. If you hunt for the experience, you have nothing to lose.