The following story is one of the best that I have read on an Oregon Pronghorn Hunt. As you can see Ken is a man of detail and the results show! Thanks Ken!
“Hey Frank,
I would like to share my hunt experience with you since that’s the condition you gave me when you helped me with advice, locations and mapping.”
The first phase of my hunt was preparation. I had 12 points and decided it was time to quit doing point savers and get into the hunt. I prepared an antelope worksheet, which I have attached. My criteria were significant public land, a projected draw range around 12 points, and a high harvest percentage. The Warner Unit second season looked like a good possibility. Next I searched the internet for hours looking for any information on Warner. I didn’t find much, but nothing negative and the general consensus was a good number of bucks, although maybe not the next B&C record. Then I found the Bwana Bubba website and made contact. You sent GPS waypoints and I managed to get them into my Magellan GPS and Topo! software. Also at your recommendation I bought the Oregon Hunting Maps premier subscription from onXmaps HUNT for my iPad. No cell service but I had pre-cached the maps and the iPad GPS worked like a charm. Excellent suggestion and worth the price. I also called and spoke with your friend Craig, the ODFW Bio for the area. He was very helpful and I had enough information to decide to put in for the tag, which I drew. After drawing I drove down and visited Craig in Lakeview. We went through the maps I’d printed and we strategized the four main areas to hunt in order of preference. The #1 area based on water and animal count this year was from about Luce Lake north to just above Colvin Lake. There were also some springs still running in Coyote Hills that made that #1A. The northernmost section of the unit was so dry this year the antelope had moved down to the area I hoped to hunt. I spent the rest of that day driving around the unit to get the lay of the land and headed home.
The next phase of my hunt was learning about Antelope hunting first hand. I borrowed my friend’s Rhino and trailered it into my chosen hunt area late the night before season. I slept in my rig and was up early for opening day. It took a couple hours to find the goats but as I got within a few miles of water they started appearing. The main area I hunted was around Colvin Lake and north and east to Cement Springs in the Coyote Hills. As I was driving down a road (road means you drive on the same big rocks as everywhere else but the grass is shorter) I came across a hunter packing out a beautiful antelope – the consensus of guys who later saw it was 82-83 – and gave him a ride several miles back to his camp past Colvin. I tried to put the sneak on a group I saw heading into water at Colvin but hunters were already set up there so the shooting began before I got there. I headed out to other areas and saw bucks other guys had taken and chatted with the State Troopers cruising through the unit. Late that afternoon I travelled back in towards where the guy with the big goat had been and sneaked into a lake about half a mile long north and east of Colvin (see google earth picture attached). Throughout the day I had seen just one buck on the hoof but I spent time practicing sneaking in on the does to see what worked and practice my skills. Now down at the water I watched as one, two, three and then four herds came to water. I noted the time they showed up and the locations, as well as their behavior. This was my first antelope hunt and I needed all the intel I could get. I checked out a fair number of antelope through binos but observed no bucks. After some time the herd furthest away (about half mile) showed some activity and in the binos I saw some chasing going on. Interesting. Then I noticed one of the lopes had a prominent black cheek patch. “Hey – that’s a buck! And I can see horns at half a mile!”
The final phase of my hunt was the stalk. Because there were some junipers and pines along my side of the lake I eased back to their outer edge and started heading down towards where the buck and does were. Covering distance on that terrain is not quick and I needed to be careful so as not to be spotted. By the time I got down to the opposite end of the lake all I could find were big-eyed cows staring up at me. I couldn’t find the herd but as I looked into the distance across the sage there was a nice buck. I hit the ground and kept watching in the binos as he was a quarter mile out, alternatively grabbing a bite of sage and trotting away. He was nervous but could not see me as I had the setting sun to my back. I watched him over the horizon and consoled myself with the thought he’d be back tomorrow at the same time so I’ll come an hour earlier. I headed back to put glass on the other herds, by now moving away from the water. It was at that point I thought I should at least walk the country the buck had gone into so I was familiar with it in case I needed to go in there the next day. As I walked out across the sage, I saw him coming back towards the lake. Again I hit the ground. He cut the distance between us, moving from my right to my left heading towards the lake.
The sun was now quite low and every time he went behind any sort of bush or tall scrub I bent as low as I could and cut whatever distance I could. I kept my shadow pointing at him as he moved so the sun was always in his eyes. He just ambled obliviously towards the lake. I figured in all the excitement he forgot to get a drink of water and was heading back. When he went behind some scrub trees near the lake I moved as far forward as possible and figured I was at 150 yards from having ranged things earlier. Then I saw why he went back – there were three does heading toward him from the lake. Now I was in trouble, though, because there were a lot more eyes and they had a better angle on me. As I reached forward to flip out the bipod on my rifle in preparation for a potential shot, all three does busted me. They took off running from my left to my right across the sage. The buck took off running behind them in the same direction. I knew there were no people the direction I was shooting and had no time to do anything but take an off-hand shot at a running antelope. So I pulled up standing and located a small juniper tree ahead of the does, putting my cross-hairs on its right side. As soon as the does ran behind it and came out the other side I counted running antelope through the scope, “One, two, three…” and timed the movement of my rifle so I was already swinging to the right just as the buck came into the crosshairs. I squeezed off one shot and watched as the antelope hunched, staggered several steps, and fell to the ground. The shot felt good, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was surprised. The 180 grain .300 Win Mag went through both lungs, and I couldn’t be more excited. I had just enough sunlight to get some pictures before the work began.
The bottom line is this: Thank you for the great help – the hunt would not have been the success it was without it!
Ken Dixon – Professionals Pursuing the Perfect Project
Ken’s Check List: Antelope Worksheet 2014