About a month back Tracy Grauf contacted me about hunting Antelope in the oregon Paulina Hunt Unit! He and his dad were both fortunate to draw tags. Tracy also planned to have his 9 year old son accompany them on the hunt. This is the best part of the hunt, just think that there are three (3) generations on this on big hunt.
“After a 12 year wait we finally received the good news that we had drawn antelope tags. Given our busy schedules there wasn’t time to scout so we were going to have to wing it. I found this web page the weekend before we were to leave and figured what the heck nothing to loose. In no-time I had received a response from Frank and a good starting spot. We spent opening day checking out the county for water and sign without much luck so we decided to move a little to the south on Sunday. Within an hour of daylight we were in the lopes…..by two we had found a couple of what we considered shooters, but managed to miss them both. After trying to burn our truck to the ground with sage in the skid pan we decided to head for the main road. We were just about out when we spotted a lone buck running across a big sage flat. We quickly found a spot to set up and for some crazy reason he turned and ran straight to us, stopping at 125 yards. One shot from my .284 and he was on the ground. I have him green scoring 67 with 6” bases and being 13-1/2” tall. With the way his horns curved back he must have liked to run fast, a lot.
Tracy Grauf’s 2009 Paulina Unit – Oregon Antelope
Sr. Grauf’s 2009 Paulina Unit – Oregon Antelope
Tuesday of our first lope adventure, found us working the same ground we had found plenty of bucks roaming on Sunday, problem was they weren’t there today. After six hours of nothing we decided to move to the agricultural ground on the south end of the unit. Hopefully we could spot some lopes roaming the BLM ground around the alfalfa pivots. The first pivot we drove by had 17 does and one good buck, one problem, the farmer was working the field right next to them and we didn’t think he would appreciate stopping to talk. We turned down another road and spotted some does coming out of the sage into a pivot. We could see the owner coming down the road from his barn so we waited for him to arrive. He stopped to talk and in a short while he had given us permission to try to take the buck that he said was with them. Long story short we made a mistake or two and succeeded only in running the heard out of this guy’s field, the last we saw them they were headed for the next county. We stopped at the ranch house to let them know that we had blown our opportunity and checked to see if we could return in the morning. He asked where they had gone and when we told him he said that he would bet they had stopped on the back side of his farthest pivot and that we should check there before moving on for the day. We did, he was right, they were there. It was getting late, we needed to decide to make a stock or leave them until morning. The decision was made to leave them until morning so we headed out only to find an interesting road a couple of miles away. It lead us to a small rim rock that headed all the way back to the area we had left the heard. Plans changed, I got out and started my stalk back along the depression while my son went back to hold their attention and watch things unfold. After about 45 minutes I found myself within 200 yards of the heard peaking over the sage brush. They saw me!! I quickly got in a sitting position, wrapped the sling around my arm and settled the cross airs on the buck’s vitals; he turned his head to go as I squeezed the trigger. The 220 Swift barked, the bullet slapped him and they were off. I put another round in and looked up only to see he wasn’t with the heard of does running off to the east. Now the hard part, figuring out where he had gone down on this huge sage brush flat, it didn’t take long to find the trail left by the fleeing does and within minutes we found him laying in their trail. This buck green scores 76 with 6” bases, 5” cutters and 14-1/2” of length.”
Tracy Grauf