![\"Bowhunting](\"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Photo-1-3.jpg\" "\\"Bowhunting")
<\/a>The Owyhees are rugged and steep and surprisingly full of life.<\/p><\/div>\n
Nick set me up with a bow at his archery store in Emmett, Idaho, and I practiced my brains out. I killed a doe mule deer with Nick a week before the pronghorn hunt and was feeling pretty good about my bow skills. This hubris would come back to bite me.<\/p>\n
Of course, Sherlock knew a great place to hunt antelope<\/a>. I\u2019m not exaggerating when I say that everything happens exactly as Nick says it will. If he says an antelope will walk down this draw, it will. So, I scouted the area he suggested.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a glassing tip from Sherlock: use your bow as a rest for your binoculars. It\u2019s steady and keeps you from having to set your bow down.<\/p><\/div>\n Five minutes after I left my vehicle there was a buck at 125 yards. It was a good looking buck, too. I made some pictures and noticed something that made him really attractive to me.<\/p>\n Tripod looked like he was wounded on his rear leg.<\/p><\/div>\n I was using a 100-400mm lens on my Lumix G9 camera, which is like a sixteen power scope, and noticed he was favoring his rear leg. It looked hurt, and I assumed he was wounded by a hunter in the season a week prior. It could have happened fighting with other bucks, but I liked the idea of killing this buck that another hunter had not recovered. I nicknamed him \u201cTripod\u201d and marked him in my OnX app.<\/p>\n One of the best things about hunting is being out early in the day.<\/p><\/div>\n That was Friday, and my hunt opened on Monday. Nick and I started hunting at sunrise. We immediately spotted five bucks in a draw 600 yards away. They were walking away from us, though, and there was no way to make a play on them. We also saw two mule deer does grazing and a young buck. Game was everywhere.<\/p>\n The Owyhees are known for large Muleys. Give this one a few more years and he could be a record-setter.<\/p><\/div>\n As we headed for a ridge, the air exploded with coyotes howling. You can read that story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n If the hunt had ended with this coyote, it would have been a complete success.<\/p><\/div>\n When we finished with the coyote it was eleven o\u2019clock. We climbed a ridge to glass. I attached my camera to my Vanguard scope and although there was a lot of atmospheric shimmer, we could tell there was a decent buck out there with a harem, though too far away to pursue. And I was still hoping to find Tripod.<\/p>\n These antelope were over a mile away, but a sixty power scope brought them close enough to judge and see horns.<\/p><\/div>\n By 6:00, I was walking angrily along, second-guessing Nick and getting grumpier with every step. Don\u2019t hunt hangry; it makes you sloppy. The truck was on the horizon but no pronghorns.<\/p>\n As we finished eating by the truck, Nick saw a buck stand up. I guess he\u2019d been politely waiting for us to finish dinner. I hit the deck and crawled around the truck to get my bow while Nick made some pictures of him coming down the hill. Nick said it was a pretty good buck, but at the end of the day, any buck is good. Nick followed him, and I followed Nick.<\/p>\n He stopped right in the bottom of the draw and laid down. The wind was perfect, and luckily there was a large bush right between us. He had sat next to the only dead tree in the draw and the trunk blocked his view. Unfortunately, the only branch on the tree also blocked his vitals from an arrow.<\/p>\n Sherlock always says that when pronghorns bed down you have forty-five minutes to make a move. The buck sat down at 6:30. At 7:10, Nick suggested he could whistle and get him up, but I said, \u201cNo way! You\u2019ve been saying forty-five minutes, and I\u2019m going to wait the full forty-five minutes!\u201d<\/p>\n At 7:16, that buck stood up. If I could bottle Nick\u2019s hunting brain and sell it, I\u2019d make a fortune.<\/p>\n This is where my mistakes began. I drew my bow for the long fifty-nine-yard shot, Nick whistled, and the buck stopped and looked at us.<\/p>\n I triggered the release and he started to move. The arrow hit him in the flank, but farther back than I\u2019d aimed. He bucked and moved ten yards. I knocked another arrow, peeked over the bush and drew again. My arrow soared down the hill but fell under his belly. Startled, he ran across the draw.<\/p>\n You can see my arrow flying down. It\u2019s right in front of his back leg and about to fall under his belly.<\/p><\/div>\n From our video, I can see that I\u2019m lucky to have hit him with my first arrow. First, I didn\u2019t pay attention to leveling my bow. If your bow is tilted right, the arrow will hit low and to the right, and if it\u2019s tilted left, it\u2019ll hit low and to the left. I\u2019m certain my bow was tilted right both times. He had jumped the string and advanced with my first shot, but the arrow wouldn\u2019t have hit as far right if the bow had been level.<\/p>\n The second reason I\u2019m lucky is that my sights were off. I checked them later and the fifty and sixty-yard pins were hitting five yards high. That\u2019s why my tilted bow still hit him the first time\u2014I was aiming farther away, which kept my arrow in the air long enough to hit instead of flying under his belly.<\/p>\n I swore I\u2019d never make the next mistake: I pursued him too soon. But, after my first shot, I realized that this was Tripod. He was already wounded on that back leg and his spirits were low. I thought that I could end it quickly.<\/p>\n I snuck to eighty yards, and he walked a little farther up the hill. I got to eighty yards again, he emptied his bowels and walked away again. Finally, he walked up and over the top. I thought he was dropping pellets, but it turned out to be huge clots of blood; he wasn\u2019t going to last much longer, and I should have just waited.<\/p>\n But I ran over the top, praying I could get one more shot and end his misery quickly. I found him on top and he was sitting behind a bush. I ranged the bush next to him and shot my last broadhead, and he ran off. He wasn\u2019t sitting\u2014he\u2019d been standing, and he was five yards farther than I thought.<\/p>\n Why not make more mistakes? I ran after him with the sun setting in my eyes. The yellow bushes were backlit and wildfire haze made the sun burn red on the horizon. Tripod\u2019s horns were silhouetted against the blazing sunset. It was gorgeous. I tried to run parallel to him and get ahead, but Tripod was staring straight at me again from 80 yards. A pronghorn buck staring straight at you is disconcerting: the black fur on his face melds perfectly with his horns and it gives him a powerful and menacing expression. He seemed to be saying, \u201cAre you kidding me? Just leave me alone to die!\u201d<\/p>\n The sun was gone and it was too dark to shoot. I went back and we decided to wait until morning. Nick said he\u2019d probably bed down and die less than 200 yards up the draw. We discussed it and agreed that I should have left him alone to bleed out and die.<\/p>\n Tripod fell as he walked\u2014he never even bedded down to die.<\/p><\/div>\n In the morning it was just as Nick predicted. Tripod was dead 75 yards from where we\u2019d left him. I pulled him down to the bottom of the draw and got him cleaned out and cut up. His rear leg was green and he\u2019d have been coyote meat<\/a> soon. That whole rear ham was wasted, but everything else was salvageable. I\u2019m grateful to have shot him. Antelope is the best meat I\u2019ve ever had. It\u2019s rich and tender, and my wife loves it.<\/p>\n I pulled him to the bottom of the draw and prepared to quarter him. It was not too hot, but I tried to get everything ready before starting.<\/p><\/div>\n Despite making mistakes sighting in my bow and pursuing Tripod too quickly after shooting him, I was blessed to end his misery and bring home a lot of delicious food. I took his head to Swanson Skullery (swansonskullery@gmail.com) and they returned a beautiful European mount.<\/p>\n Each time I see it I\u2019m reminded of what not to do on my next hunt.<\/p>\n The finished mount is amazing. The eyes are enormous. The horns ended up being twelve inches long, bare minimum for a decent buck, I\u2019m told. I\u2019d have taken him\u00a0even if they were shorter, though. I love the whole story. I even love that the left horn is broomed off. He had patches of hair missing from his back and I can only imagine the fights he had with other bucks.<\/p><\/div>\n A first-time bowhunt for pronghorns. Throw in a bit of hubris and a couple of small mistakes, and here’s a list of do’s and do-not’s for your next hunt. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":98572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_specdata_upc":"","_specdata_placement":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1239,1217,4320,1348,1256,1255],"tags":[1390,1361,1362,1209,1267],"featured":[],"hunt365":[4089],"class_list":{"0":"post-98569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-big-game","8":"category-hunt365","9":"category-hunting-hunt365","10":"category-levi-sim","11":"category-stories","12":"category-tips","13":"tag-antelope","14":"tag-archery","15":"tag-bow-hunting","16":"tag-hunt365","17":"tag-hunt365more1","18":"hunt365-hunting"},"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
At last! A buck appeared just as we were ending our day.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/a>
He bedded down with a tree blocking us from his eyes\u2026and his vitals from my arrow.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/a>
This is the view of him from fifty-nine yards, with my head in the foreground.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>***Shop GunsAmerica to gear up for your next hunt***<\/a><\/b><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"