Yesterday was the opener for MT antelope, we headed over to a buddies ranch saturday evening and set up our camp. We got up at 5:30 Sunday and cooked breakfast while we got ready. Legal shooting light was around 7 am and I slipped out of the camper 5 minutes early to glass around. Went and walked behind the camper and glassed the big hill behind us, nothing there, walked around to the front of the camper and there they were, about 30 does and 1 buck, I ranged them at 101 yards!! Right in front of our camp! It was still dark, and they were unconcerned, feeding around, so I got the wife from the camper and got her set up on the buck. We waited for legal light and for him to clear off from a cow he was feeding in front of (we were right by the ranchers barns!) and then she let him have it, one shot from the .270 and our season had started with a bang!!
Here's a shot of me getting ready to gut her buck, you can see we literally stepped out the door of the camper and she tagged him!!
So now it's just me and my buddy w/ tags left, we hunted around for an hour or two and didn't see much. We drove down the road towards the ranch house and we saw a big herd 30-40 animals w/ a few good bucks behind the house. I stopped in and made sure we were ok pursuing them so close to the house, and after getting the go ahead started to walk up the draw where we had seen the antelope. We had barely made it out of the yard and into the adjacent pasture when a group we hadn't seen, a few does and 3 bucks ran 200 yards in front of us. I immediately set up and when the biggest buck paused my buddy ranged him at 250 and I let one rip with the 300 wsm. We heard the solid whop, and he ran over the top of the hill where we found him piled up about 60 yards from where I shot him. He measured 13 1/2 long, and was aged at 4 1/2. Not huge but a good representative for the earea we hunt.
While I was gutting my buck and getting pics, my buddy went after the bigger main herd we were originally eyeing. He disappeared over the hill and started stalking the herd. He was getting close when some does busted him and the herd took off up the hill, he could see a big buck at the top of the hill but outside of his range. A smaller buck gave him a 360 yard shot though, and he decided to join the ranks of the "haves" rather than the "have nots" ;D
All in all it was a good season, we were tagged out w/ 3 bucks by 10 am, all clean 1 shot kills. Good luck on the hunts everyone and till next time...
