My 12-year old son was fortunate enough to draw one of only five licenses to hunt pronghorn antelope on New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range, an Army base widely recognized for its healthy population of free-ranging Kalahari oryx. You may recall our recent exciting hunts for oryx. You'll also recall that the Army allows only limited photography, so I don't have any cool pictures of oryx, the beautiful desert and mountains, the numerous tarantulas we saw, and so on. On these hunts you're only allowed to take a few pictures of your trophy, with numerous restrictions about the background and what can be included.
The boy and I left home Thursday after school and met my dad in a small town near the gate through which we would enter the range the following morning. Dad was on the way to elk camp with his "retirement camper," so we had a nice place to stay for this hunt. We got our gear ready and hit the sack. The next morning we leisurely made our way to WSMR for the mandatory 10:00 safety briefing. After the check-in, vehicle searches, and finally the briefing, we were released to hunt about lunch time. The five youth pronghorn hunters were sharing the range with 45 oryx hunters, so we let them all head out before getting too excited. By about 2:00 I had spotted a small herd of antelope with a nice buck, so we started a long stalk. As we were getting into rifle range, a pair of fired up bull oryx charged into the area, spooking the pronghorn off, but rewarding us with quite a show as they duked it out.
That set the stage for our hunt though - the rest of that day and all of the following were "Murphy's Law" days. When things could go wrong, they did. We glassed, walked, jogged, got on the sticks, watched antelope run off, and so on. On Saturday afternoon, we were contacted by a range game warden, who asked us to meet him near the northern fence, where he had a nice buck spotted. We made the 30-minute drive and were soon looking at a couple decent antelope. We tried a stalk, and you guessed it, it was blown by some passing oryx hunters. We tried another spot and found a couple groups of pronghorn, but they were too far out in the brush to attempt a stalk before the mandatory check-out time. So, we put them to bed and headed out.
We returned to that location the next morning, but cooler temperatures and high winds seemed to have kept most critters in bed. We covered a lot of ground in the pickup, glassing from high points. By about 8:30 we started to see a few critters, mostly oryx, but then a few antelope. We made a couple short unsuccessful stalks before bumping into some oryx hunters who told us about a nice lone buck they'd seen just a couple miles away. We hurried over there, located him about 1,000 yards from the road. While we were trying to get into position to start a stalk, those same fellows pulled up in a cloud of dust and excitedly told us about a bedded buck about three miles from us just a short distance from the road. We followed them there and sure enough, there was a decent little bucked bedded in an open grassy area. We ditched the trucks in the bar ditch, grabbed the rifle and Trigger Sticks, and quickly planned a stalk through the brush. We used a slight rise and big yuccas to close the distance to about 120 yards. By the time the boy got loaded up and comfortable on the sticks, the buck had stood and was intently staring at us. My son repeatedly said he was solid and comfortable with a straight on shot, and given the close range, I relented and okayed the shot. He missed. The buck spooked off a few yards and stopped, this time just slightly quartering to us. The second shot found its mark and the buck was down after a short run. We field dressed him, then put up the game hoist on the truck and quartered him into the cooler. And since the game hoist was up, we offered its use to a successful oryx hunter who we had seen gutting his oryx just a few hundred yards from our excitement.
Here are a couple pictures that meet WSMR's photography guidelines.
The boy and his pronghorn.
Three generations celebrate a young man's first antelope.
The boy and I left home Thursday after school and met my dad in a small town near the gate through which we would enter the range the following morning. Dad was on the way to elk camp with his "retirement camper," so we had a nice place to stay for this hunt. We got our gear ready and hit the sack. The next morning we leisurely made our way to WSMR for the mandatory 10:00 safety briefing. After the check-in, vehicle searches, and finally the briefing, we were released to hunt about lunch time. The five youth pronghorn hunters were sharing the range with 45 oryx hunters, so we let them all head out before getting too excited. By about 2:00 I had spotted a small herd of antelope with a nice buck, so we started a long stalk. As we were getting into rifle range, a pair of fired up bull oryx charged into the area, spooking the pronghorn off, but rewarding us with quite a show as they duked it out.
That set the stage for our hunt though - the rest of that day and all of the following were "Murphy's Law" days. When things could go wrong, they did. We glassed, walked, jogged, got on the sticks, watched antelope run off, and so on. On Saturday afternoon, we were contacted by a range game warden, who asked us to meet him near the northern fence, where he had a nice buck spotted. We made the 30-minute drive and were soon looking at a couple decent antelope. We tried a stalk, and you guessed it, it was blown by some passing oryx hunters. We tried another spot and found a couple groups of pronghorn, but they were too far out in the brush to attempt a stalk before the mandatory check-out time. So, we put them to bed and headed out.
We returned to that location the next morning, but cooler temperatures and high winds seemed to have kept most critters in bed. We covered a lot of ground in the pickup, glassing from high points. By about 8:30 we started to see a few critters, mostly oryx, but then a few antelope. We made a couple short unsuccessful stalks before bumping into some oryx hunters who told us about a nice lone buck they'd seen just a couple miles away. We hurried over there, located him about 1,000 yards from the road. While we were trying to get into position to start a stalk, those same fellows pulled up in a cloud of dust and excitedly told us about a bedded buck about three miles from us just a short distance from the road. We followed them there and sure enough, there was a decent little bucked bedded in an open grassy area. We ditched the trucks in the bar ditch, grabbed the rifle and Trigger Sticks, and quickly planned a stalk through the brush. We used a slight rise and big yuccas to close the distance to about 120 yards. By the time the boy got loaded up and comfortable on the sticks, the buck had stood and was intently staring at us. My son repeatedly said he was solid and comfortable with a straight on shot, and given the close range, I relented and okayed the shot. He missed. The buck spooked off a few yards and stopped, this time just slightly quartering to us. The second shot found its mark and the buck was down after a short run. We field dressed him, then put up the game hoist on the truck and quartered him into the cooler. And since the game hoist was up, we offered its use to a successful oryx hunter who we had seen gutting his oryx just a few hundred yards from our excitement.
Here are a couple pictures that meet WSMR's photography guidelines.
The boy and his pronghorn.
Three generations celebrate a young man's first antelope.
