I'm often asked why I love antelope hunting so much. I guess it’s because when we go antelope hunting, we see a lot of game. Antelope hunting isn’t like hunting elk or deer. To hunt deer or elk, you may have to do a lot of hiking and scouting before you see a critter. When we go out antelope hunting, we just drive out on the prairie. When we spot a herd of antelope, we drive closer to the antelope to see if a buck is in the herd that we may want to take.
I took a really cool antelope last year. I mounted him, and he's on my wall in the house today. We were hunting just north of Laramie on public land. We had watched this buck all summer long. Chad had decided he was going to try to take this buck with his bow, if he could get close enough. The buck was a non-typical antelope buck, because one of his horns tipped forward.
On this particular morning, we had one of our veterans with us. He’d already taken his animal, and he just wanted to go along with us to watch Chad and I take our antelopes. Chad spotted the buck he had wanted to take all during archery season. But just as he saw the buck, the antelope went down in a ditch and moved out of sight - too far away to take with a bow.
I was the only one who had an antelope tag left unfilled for rifle hunting, so we climbed out of our vehicle, got all our stuff together and started making a stalk. When we first looked for the buck, we couldn’t find him. But as we continued to walk down the side of the drainage, the buck came up out of the drainage – about 80 yards away. I had a bipod on my rifle. I lay down on the ground, set up the bipod and squeezed the trigger. The buck didn’t take another step. I took that antelope with my 7mm.
I changed from hunting with a .30-06 to a 7mm, because I started shooting the 7mm a lot. I became more accurate at 500 yards with the 7mm than I was with the .30-06. I still use the .30-06 when we’re hunting in the woods for deer or elk. However, when we’re out on the prairie, and most often my shot will be a long shot, I have much more confidence in the 7mm. I know I can easily make a good clean shot out to 500 yards, because I have a Nikon BDC with a 3x12 variable scope. Most often the shots we take on antelope will be 300 to 400 yards.
Day 2: Rena Parsons is Bitten by the Antelope Bug
Tomorrow: Rena Parsons’ First Archery Antelope
