Wyoming 2009

Woody has the video. Maybe he'll post it later on after it is transfered to computer.

Like most trips, this one started with some driving, only this one had more driving than most of the others. I chewed through the rope at work and pointed the truck towards Woody at about 11 on a Wed and never looked back. My only regret was that Max didn’t have a song about barreling up I-35, it would have been fitting.

I slid into Muenster slightly ahead of schedule, loaded up a freezer into the trailer, a Woody, and all of his gear and we slipped outta town, headed to Stillwater to meet up with the founder of the feast. Alan warned he would leave without us if we weren’t there by 9 sharp in the PM, so we were. There were brief discussions about packing strategies but in the end all was thrown haphazardly into the trailer along with another freezer. Our intent was to jam these freezers to maximum capacity with Wyoming wildlife. After a brief check of the packing list we hit the road.

The road to WY passed quickly as I had first shift on the sleeping. Morning’s predawn found us at the CO line, headed to Denver to make a right hand turn. At this point we were very low on fuel and very full of piss. A quick stop on the side of the road found us lit up by a friendly officer of some sort; road side service to tell us where the nearest diesel could be found. We coasted into the station on fumes, gassed up, and were back on the road to watch the morning sun light up the Rockies out the driver’s side window. By this time, Alan was too stoked about the trip to relinquish the wheel and pushed us all the way to our camp site. Crossing through CO to WY we spotted countless pronghorn and grooved on copious amounts of Chris LeDoux as we were in his part of the world.

Headed into camp, we turned off the main road and were immediately confronted by a few dozen antelope, several turkeys, and a number of mule deer. We drove by a pivot covered with critters and green green grass. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to hunt this area. Had we had access to this round chunk of paradise we would have tagged out and pointed the truck homeward bound in a few short shots. We drove along the Powder River and headed to camp. Camp was an amazing little spot Alan had picked out after days of scrutinizing aerial and topo maps; it was a quarter acre toe shaped flat spot bounded by two sharp and deep draws; it was accessible by a short descent down a clay hill, more on that later.

So we dumped the trailer. Lightened the load in the truck and headed out to scout the area, fueled by the fact that we were in the area where the “deer and the antelope play”. We toasted to many things but saw very few. Previously, somewhere between Ft. Collins and Cheyenne, we had established the pecking order for trigger pulls. How this was established I can’t recall, prolly some asinine method of do-over’s and rock-paper-scissors. Anyway the order was established. Woody had 1st buck and 3rd doe, Alan had the opposite of that and I had the middles of both…so we hunted.

We came across several gates, locked and unlocked, we drove through areas with signs telling us we were not supposed to be there, and we met up with other folks from other states with similar looks of confusion. We were trying our damndest to be well above or at least very near the law. We came across several lopes grazing on sage across a fence line behind a locked gate. We slunk outta the truck to go inspect them, rifles in hand. After a bit of discussion and debate we decided they were clearly not legal critters and vowed that we would return to catch them on the move the following day but we never did. Unbeknownst to us these critters were just doing what comes naturally to pronghorn: loitering on the line. If anyone has tried to pattern antelope, this is the only pattern to them. This is an interesting habit of antelope; they are apparently born with an innate sense of BLM and State Lands. They can pick out the boundary and will stay at a minimum of 10-20yds on the no-shoot side of the line regardless if there is a fence or not. The trick is to…well I’m not sure what the trick is, but there must be one.

So a bit of driving finds us pointed back towards camp where figure we are gonna turn in early and get a good start for the next day, wrong. There not 50yds off the road are 2 lopes just begging for the lead. Alan obliges them and steps outta the truck, lays prone, and gives the larger one a taste of Texas. Fives are passed about as we have now prevented a skunking for the trip. The crew has tasted success and it tastes like good. Back to camp for some sleep.

Morning came much earlier than necessary and we found ourselves in the truck at 4 in the AM. We drove about “scouting” in the dark. In all honesty we were just wasting diesel and waiting to toast the dawn, it seems that we are not very good at waiting so we toasted the dark then the predawn and a sundry of other things. Dawn found us glassing a field in the lowlands. I stepped out to make some water and found a Game Warden. My plan changed as I began to inspect the trailer hitch for some reason. Not sure why, I just didn’t wanna have my baby maker out while talking to the law. He was a nice enough guy, checked our licenses and advised us that we are supposed to sign them before going afield on the line that says “sign here before going afield”. He also told us we were on private land, something we did not agree with. See we had scrutinized the maps, 3 of them, and had also pulled out Woody’s computer with GPS and had verified this was a killing field.

So we are all standing around discussing this “private land” thing with the law, maps come out and he is pointing at a slightly different area and telling us this is where we are. We disagree; he says we need to get a GPS so we can be sure where we are. I step into the truck to retrieve the computer and am nearly blown down by the smell of whiskey emanating from the Dodge. Apparently Alan had spilled a fairly large quantity of whiskey in the truck and all across himself when the law showed up. This explained why he kept his distance and allowed Woody and I to argue on his behalf. We managed to prove the point of where we were with the computer, to which the Game Warden replied “Fuck you just never know where the boundaries are”. This did not make us feel any better about the boundaries, but it did prove two things. First, it proved we were legal on this killing field and 2nd, folks in WY use the word “fuck” a lot, it is like a comma to them, I assume it must help to keep them warm, however in another few months it will be so cold all you will be able to say is shhhhh-it, that’s when you know it is cold.

So we meandered our way about this area in search of some lopes, we found some but were still unsure of some of the boundaries, a small buck was quite legal but he got a pass. A few does skirted what we thought were the edges only to later learn they were true blue legal. They got passes due to our ignorance. We found some traversing a large draw going from private to public and decided to wait them out. We got impatient and made the worst stalk in WY history. Once it was obvious this crappy tactic would not work, we beat a retreat and attempted to devise an even worse plan. We could not come up with anything worse so we waited and scouted some other areas. About 30 mins later the does were out in the public lands, far beyond where we anticipated them to be. We attempted to get into a position to make our shots when the critters were nearly blasted off the road by a pumper truck blowing through our hunt. The does went wild, all directions, two cut and made a favorable break for us. Woody and I sprang into position, me laying in a bed of cactus, Woody laying the middle of the road. Woody yells for me to “take em” so I part the hair of the larger one and miss a headshot. They take to running and I take to ranging. Woody plugs one behind the shoulder and she decides to show us why they call em “speed goats”, she gets a high gear and puts the distance between us and them. I range again as two go behind a bush but only one comes out. She is down. We slap hands, pick cactus, and laugh at me for a few then collect Woody’s lady. We dump a few p-dogs for good measure, cause they exist.

Then it is off for more. I glassed up a group of four on the side of a hill and we decide to put a truck sneak on them. We get in to about where we thought they would be but they weren’t there anymore. They had slipped up the hill that we were slipping behind, busted! We still were not sure if this was the same group previously spotted so we split up. I slunk along outta sight of where I thought they were and Woody & Alan went to get the truck. We all realized there was a good buck-lope in the batch of four but still had limited experience of what a “good buck” looked like. We met back up at the base of a hill just as the group was coming out of a canyon some 600yds below us. We decided to head them off at the pass. We truck snuck around a few miles and came in on them. Woody’s buck to pass on and he did. The gauntlet was thrown down, mine to pick up. I let it lay as I was quite unsure of my rifle after I missed a 120yd head shot an hour earlier. Alan picked up the gauntlet, put it down, and picked it up, and put it down, picked it up and put a short stalk on the beast who hopped over the ridge. Alan put it down again claiming “It’s just not meant to be”. Then he picked it up again but soon put it down again stating “It’s just not meant to be”. We eased around a few turns looking for what was “not meant to be” and found it. Alan dropped prone, Woody gave continuous updates on the range, and I spied it all through field glasses. Alan pressed the trigger, the 250 barked and made it “be”. First buck down on our first full day of hunting, all is well in our world.


Later that day I miss another headshot but connect with a high shoulder follow up at a scotch over 200yds. Nice fat doe down, my first of the trip, so now I am in the game and a bread winner too.


Woody is up, the scene is set, two doe-lopes skirting the edge of the public-private boundary (like they do). Alan surveys the maps and determines these are legal, just barely. Woody and I make a quick stalk, he with the rifle and me with the range finder. Woody is zeroed at 165yds and these critters are standing nearly at that exactly. Problem is there are two, one much smaller, had they both been nice as the first it would have been a very good opportunity to conserve ammo. As it was it was a short waiting game. They seemed a bit flighty; as little one took a step Woody dumped the larger of the two with a well placed shot. This brought day two to an end with a daily tally of four, five total.


Around about this time we realized we failed to bring the gambrels and had to improvise on the hanging and cleaning. Much scouting was conducted to find a suitable tree to hang the beasts from. Woody devised a plan to hang them from the gate on one of the sundry of oilfield locations. This turned out to be the best option going. We put together an assembly line cleaning that would have made Upton Sinclair disgusted. Alan and I took em apart and threw front legs to Woody to bone out on the bloody tailgate. Our conversation with the Game Warden that morning had provided more insight to dressing the critters. Previously we were under the impression we could only quarter the lopes. Now we had permission to completely bone them out and as such, the knives flew. As to the question of proof of sex, this became an interesting interlude to the standard way of doing things. We had to keep all the whos in a who-bag. A 1gal ziplock bag came out and became our designated who-bag. We packed that who-bag so full of whos that it would no longer fit in the rod holders (also who-holders, who woulda thunk it) that come with the truck. Also learned that if you jam a who-bag in the who-holder on a cold day, you make a who-sickle that wont budge from the who-holder. After that we changed tactics and just let the who-bag ride in the bed of the truck. The law just wants to know that the body count matches the who count. They are not concerned with who’s whos are who’s. As you can imaging we had much fun with our new word.

That night we made our first fire, a welcome sight as cold camp is not common for us. All were tired, especially Alan who who-ed out at 7:30. Woody and I enjoyed the fire for a few hours and called it a night. The following morning we made coffee and decided food may be a good idea. We hadn’t eaten since we had gotten to WY; I guess we had just forgotten, what with all the killing that needed doing. Breakfast was the standard camp fare, jalapenos, taters, onions, bacon, and eggs all whipped together in the iconic disk plow that always follows on such adventures, and the usual tortillas for plates. Good stuff! The leftovers were pushed into foil for hill packs and away we went, off to start day 3 (which was really only the 2nd full day of hunting).

Day 3 was prolly the best day in my opinion. We introduced the video camera to the mix which was a new and exciting tool. We headed out to the flats where we had run into Mr. Game Warden the previous day. I was up for lady killin and we spied one out in the flats. Alan and I got into position and the camera was running this time. Alan ran the camera like a regular Spielberg and I got the shot off without a hitch. Doe down at 228yds with a neck shot.


Next Alan was up for the ladies with Woody as the steady handed camera man. We spied some doe-lopes and we all went into action; me on the range finder, Woody on the camera, and Alan on the trigger. Woody got spectacular footage of a beautiful miss by Alan as the bullet sailed harmlessly across the snout of a doe in the neighborhood of 170yds. The critters scattered, I called the ranges while picking out the shot for Alan, Woody turned off the camera, and Alan found his mark at 265yds he rolled a fat doe with a well placed high neck shot. Woody got beautiful video of Alan standing up after the shot but nothing but the miss prior to that.


Woody was razzed plenty for his Blair Witch style camera work, almost as much as Alan was razzed for missing. At least when I miss I have the common decency to be sure there are no cameras running. So now we have 2 in the truck. We survey the maps and decide to go try a new spot, a small block of public land we assume most folks would overlook due to its size and distance from the remainder of the BLM/State Lands…jackpot. Alan spies a lone buck bedded on the side of a hill, he is a nice one, without question a shooter. Maps come out. It is determined he, like pretty much all the rest of em, is on the line. However, this time he is on our side of the line. So we all bail out, I grab the range finder and binos, Alan grabs the camera and tripod, Woody grabs the rifle and a menacing grin. First ranging showed 200 and change, how much change I cant remember. The buck stood up and began to walk slowly almost directly away. No shot. Range was pulled several times but the shot never presented. He came to a stop at 401 yards out and just stayed there for what seemed like an eternity but was actually 18 mins. In the interest of preserving Woody’s eyesight, neck, and sanity, I advised he take a break and close his eyes for a while and I would keep up the vigilance of the watching/ waiting game. The power on the camera began to wane and Alan hit the pause button. It was determined all this waiting was making me and Alan thirsty. Alan went to the truck to fetch some frosties and spied a group of mule deer skylined on the horizon and headed in our direction. This would be all it would take to make the shot happen. It would most likely happen pretty fast. We advised Woody as to what was going on and determined the mule deer were on the prong-lope’s blind side and when he saw them he would either make tracks or present the opportunity. Fortunately the latter happened. The shot opened up at 401yds and Woody pushed one through between the pump and the boiler room. The beast made a short run out of public land and turned back and ran back into legal and fell.


Later that day we spied a group of does bedded down on a hillside. I was up. We moved around into position and took the range and wind. Range was 460yds and the wind was showing a minor 7mph with a ½ value. Woody, the steely eyed camera man sprang to action. He took up a position behind me and asked which critter was mine. “The high doe” was my response. Woody steadied the camera on a completely different critter and called for the shot. At the last moment he zoomed out slightly and got my girl in the frame. The shot was not the best either. It anchored her in place but was a bit high of the shoulder and split the spine and ruined a bit of strap. Not sure where the error was, may have been closer than 460 and the error was in the ranging, may have been a poor trigger break. Being as the doe was bedded some 20yds in front of some rocks, I may have picked up an erroneous reading of 460 to the rocks and she was closer. Outcome is still the same, speed goat down: dinner.


So back to the hunt, Alan is the gunner and away we go, looking for more meat. We find ourselves back in the area where Alan had missed then connected and the story for this go-round runs concurrent with the last one. With the exception of Woody gets it all on tape this time. Alan’s first is a bit less than perfect with a non dropping neck shot. The follow up is much better with a drt headshot. Alan called for a range but was too fast on the trigger for a yardage to be provided. Upon the crack of the 22-250, it was determined the doe-lope was “about that far”. Done for the day, tally: 5.

The next day the snows blew in and the lopes blew out. We spent the day driving about in search of where the hell they might go when the weather turned like this. Alan had been hoping for snow the whole trip, and he got it in spades. It snowed and snowed. We became adventurous and set out to “pioneer” our way through uncharted territory. We found that the snow quickly turned the roads to mud, not just mud but slickery and treacherous mud with impending and certain death to either side of the road in many areas. We threw caution and common sense in the bed of the truck with the who-bag and a mound of empties and set off in search of our destiny. Turns out our destiny was to wander around till we were completely lost, all our old tracks covered with new snow and no clue where we were. Woody stepped in as the voice of reason, pulled out the computer and quickly learned we were some 60 miles from wherever we thought we should be on land we shouldn’t be on and surrounded by big buck-alopes that we shouldn’t shoot. He also checked the weather and determined the area was under an “extreme winter death advisory”. We plotted a course to freedom that ended at a locked gate with the highway and freedom just beyond the lock. Training kicked in and we grabbed tools and soon had the gate off the hinges and the truck on the other side. The tricky part was putting everything back together. We got the gate hung with only a minor incident (I say minor because it didn’t happen to me); Alan lost about an inch of flesh from a nasty gate pinching. But we were on to freedom. Tally for the day: zero.

Deciding that darkness and snow may have bested us on this occasion and Gillette was closer than camp we decided to get a room in town for the night. We supped at the worst place known to man, the Golden Corral, it was complete crap. We stopped off at a super sleazy joint and Alan haggled us a room for $50 a night. It became obvious they were not accustomed to renting rooms for such a long duration. The room smelled of rough and bad sex. The beds were bowed in the middle and there was a large plywood patch on the floor. Woody immediately nixed the room and began to frantically search for better accommodations. I reminded him of the Surfside Hotel and Alan and I agreed this place was much better and had far less mosquitoes. Woody wanted posh and lavish so we checked out and made our way to the Super 8. Alan checked us in while Woody and I sat in the truck watching huge blue and yellow electrical surges in the distance. Alan returned with the room key just as the power went out. Not to worry, we were all spent anyway and assed out with ease.

Morning found us snowball fighting in the parking lot with very high spirits. These were soon dashed once we returned to camp to learn that the “short descent down a clay hill” mentioned in paragraph four had become a slidey death trap that was difficult to traverse afoot. The thought of getting the trailer out became tempered with questions like “How much do you figure that trailer is worth?” Thoughts of taking the truck down that hill ended with thoughts of seeing the truck at the bottom of the 60ft draw below the hill. It was decided to leave the stuff where it was and go hunt for a while, so we did. It sucked, we saw nothing. Tally for the day: another goose egg. That night we made a big fire to celebrate being stuck. However we devised a plan as the weather was supposed to turn much colder and very windy. First thing in the AM we would work the trailer out on the frozen ground.

The morning found success for us. We managed to walk the truck in and the trailer out without so much as a tire slip and there was no death or destruction of property. We were all quite happy about that. Once we had established a new base camp we returned to the old one for fire, coffee, and a good breakfast, then on to the killin fields. By this time we began to feel we may have exhausted our core area but weren’t brave enough to go “pioneering” again. A quick review of the map showed an area to the south, another small block of land surrounded by private land similar to the area that fell Woody’s buck. We set off and soon found it to be the antelope Mecca. However, we were again unsure of the boundaries. After a few calls to the Game Warden, State Biologist, County Commissioner, Appellate Court Judge, and the dog catcher for the next county over we decided we were legal. This involved a short stalk of a bit over a quarter mile. We found ourselves in position on a bluff overlooking a large bowl full of antelope about 400yds out. We had spied a big one in this group but could not find him once we were in position. We waited around for a while as the #2 largest lope was bedded down surrounded by other bucks. There was no shot, well, no shot that would not result in two boy-lopes being downed and we didn’t have the tags for that. In hindsight this was a good thing. Apparently Woody had spied a nice one that I was unaware of. Later Alan re-spied it and brought it to my attention. The plan came together. The dude-alope was bedded down and pretty well hunkered in. We had strong winds blowing right across the shot at full value of 17mph. The range was 480yds but the wind was difficult. I did the math and set in for the shot. Woody had film rolling and told me to take him. The shot rolled the beast where he lay, he never got up. The shot also almost rolled Woody who got beautiful footage of the sky and the earth. I had apparently not given enough windage to the shot as it was about 4” forward of my intended high shoulder placement but shattered the verts in the neck. Fives were passed around and backs were slapped till it came time to drag the critter out. That night we got proper stewed on tequila and two kinds of whiskey. Good times all around. Daily tally: just that one.


The next morning we all arose quite spry considering the lengths we went to the previous night to try to assure we wouldn’t. It was back out to the spot from the day before. We had bad weather trying to push in and this was the spot where they congregate when it goes western. Unfortunately, the day before Alan told some folks about this spot. Today they were there. One dude was sitting in the barditch with a small buck and a doe waiting on his buddies who were around the corner hunting this little square mile piece. Lesson learned, when you drive 1,500 miles to hunt prong-lopes, don’t give away the honey hole to the first folks who stop and ask for directions, now we know. So this spot was bust, all the critters had decided to flee at the sound of this guys rifle. We loitered in the area as the snow began to fall. Critters threatened to enter the killing fields but loitered beyond the edges and gave death a wide berth as the snows fell. We made several passes through the area and put the spot on about 60 lopes that held their ground and maintained a distance of no less than ¼ mile from legal. We decided to bail on the spot as it was freshly shot up. We vowed to make a pass of some of the other areas and return later. Woody was on the rifle with two doe tags spent and two on the shelf. We soon found a place for him to spend those tags. Woody plops into position with me on his heels…range, fire, miss. Around the corner to head them off and the next shot presents itself. I’m calling range and spotting. “The second doe from the left is the biggest, she is the shooter”. BANG, the doe to the far left wheels into a Hi-Ho Silver and crumbles. My mind recoils as I think I gave Woody a bad call. I pan further to the left to see if there was another, there is nothing, just then BANG and the doe I called drops. Woody pulled a nice double and dumped two does 20yds apart. He was tagged out.


It was now to me and Alan to dump one doe apiece…today. We decided it would be best to tag out and head out today as the weather man was calling for another extreme winter death advisory, only this one was supposed to be much worse and last much longer and be much colder. Single digits freak me out so I was onboard with this quick kill idea. It was either tag out and head out or just head out. We decided we would hunt our way back to camp, take Woody’s critters apart, break camp and hunt our way to the highway with the trailer in tow. The plan was to head out by way of the antelope death bowl and try to knock down a pair over there. This plan went completely out the window as we rounded a bend and spied some of our quarry about to top a ridge and disappear into private land. Alan and I sprang into action. From any distance it must have sounded like all hell had broken loose, however upon closer inspection it was only me and Alan unleashing a poor volley of hasty shots on biodegradable reactionary targets. Neither of us were exactly proud of the level of shooting and both were actually were willing to credit the other with the shots but the end result was clear, we all tagged out. 15 antelope down, time to take em apart and head to Texas.

The drive back solidified the idea to leave. Extreme limited visibility from Gillette to Denver, creeping along at 45mph across icy roads.

Then the left turn into heavy rains till Stillwater. Unloaded Alan and his gear, and took a south through the worst of the rain. We passed 20 some odd vehicles in the ditch, a flipped over cement truck and an 18-wheeler that was busted in twain. But life got better once we crossed the Red River. Smooth sailing from there. Somebody said it best, I think it was Woody: “Damn that was fun”. Truer words aint often spoken.