I got a call from my cousin who was very interested in going on a hunt with me. He told me whatever we decide, he was going do it with a bow. Now I had to decide what I wanted to do. Having hunted with Montana Whitetails before it was a pretty easy decision as to where to go. MONTANA here we come! I love bow hunting myself and Keith got some beautiful whitetails just begging to be hunted with stick and string. Just 1 problem, the last time I hunted with Keith I spot & stalked a Mule Deer with my nephew with rifle in hand. It was way too much fun not to do it again! Plus this time I got a Mule deer doe tag & Antelope tag in my pocket. Having 3 tags to fill I didn’t know what we would hunt first. A few guys arrived in camp before I did and already took 2 nice Antelope! So Keith already knew where some would be hanging out. We set out for a Pronghorn buck first. As we drove through part of the ranch we would be hunting, we spotted a couple different groups of a 100 plus Antelope in each group. The first group we stalked up on we decided to pass on several good bucks hoping for something bigger-Glad we did! After getting by some cattle and crawling as far as we could without getting busted. We glassed over the herd and I really liked one buck that was very wide. Keith ranged him at 331 yards and asked me if I could make the shot (never had to shoot this far back home). There’s one way to find out. Boom! The Browning 300 mag. did its job making me look good.
After some high fives and awesome photos of the moment there was plenty of time to get me my Mule deer doe. We spotted a group of 5 does feeding in an alfalfa field. We slipped into position about 80 yards out and used a fence post for a shooting rest. Just like that my second tag of the trip got filled. Not bad for the first day.
The next morning at day break we spotted a really nice mature Muley buck heading back up into the sage hills from the lush alfalfa fields. He was heading right to us under 100 yards, (this is going to be fast & easy). A quick look to judge him over and get the bipod set up. Are you kidding me, the leg on the bipod is stuck and now the buck senses something is up. Not wanting to risk a bad shot shooting free hand we let him walk off over the hill. Thinking we can get back on him we grabbed our gear. WRONG. He outsmarted us a couple more times. We backed off not wanting to push him to far in hopes to still hunt him later. We saw a few other smaller bucks and some does midday. Later that afternoon we went back to the same area looking to redeem myself. I still kept thinking to myself I blew my best chance on a great buck.
However, right away we started seeing a lot of does watching us working our way towards them. We didn’t have a lot of time to circle around them. Not bounding off yet, they probably heard I filled my doe tag the day before. As we proceeded to get closer we noticed a good buck with them. What the!!!! Where did he come from. We quickly got set up on him before he knew what was happening. Somehow he never gave me a clean broadside shot, he kept moving his head and his rack was covering up his vitals every time I started squeezing the trigger. Eventually he walked off around the hill. From almost pulling the trigger to another buck getting away again. We didn’t know where he was going to go so we decided to sneak around and get up above him. It worked, we got there before he did. A couples does had to hear us belly crawling across the rocks and ran down towards the buck. Again he didn’t know what spooked the does and while he was trying to figure it out Keith ranged him at a little over 100 yards. A few seconds later I had just filled my favorite tag of them all. He didn’t go more than 50 yards. The rest of the week I hit the Shields river and caught some beautiful trout.
Mark Kwasniewski
