Congrats, both looked like good shots. .... "And now for the rest of the story!!"
Ok I'm not much of a story teller but here goes. My hunting buddy Dave and I drove out to my little make shift hunting camp in Wyoming in late Sept. There we met up with four young guys from my sportsmen's club back in PA. They wanted to hunt for pronghorns, so I told them their best bet was to meet me out there and be ready to hunt on opening day Oct.1st. That way they would have first pick and have a chance at them before they get spooked up by other hunters. They showed up a few days early and tried their hands at coyote hunting but found out very quickly how smart those little devils can be. When opening day dawned I took 2 of the boys with me and Dave took the other 2 with him. My group drew blood first but it didn't come that easy, although it should have. You see these young guys came prepared, practiced and ready with their fancy shooting rigs, high dollar scopes, range finders, shooting sticks, all sorts of shooting accessories and a ton of confidence and for a few days before the hunt I was trying to prepare them for the reality of antelope hunting. And the reality is that guys find ways of missing antelope, I don't know why they just do. Anyway shortly after 7 AM we drove up on a beautiful antelope buck, we just crested the hill and there he stood too close to really do anything about so I did the smart thing and just drove on by him about 75 yards or so, stopped the truck and as calmly as I could instructed George to get out and kill him. Well he got out and got set up pretty quickly and I just got my head turned around in time to see a clean miss, looked like he shot right over his back. George looks at me and says "did I miss"? To which I replied something like "looks like it, if I were you I'd shoot again pretty quick". The second shot rang out and this time it was a clean kill shot. George was feeling so many different emotions at that time I almost pitied him, hell I might have pitied him if I wouldn't have known what he had just shot. His first ever pronghorn will more then likely make the book and he darn near didn't get it at 75 yards. Now that would have been a pity. We made short work of photos, gutting and loading him into the truck and were off down the road to another of my favorite spots.
A few miles later and a few minutes of glassing turned up another nice buck, this one wasn't going to be as easy though. This one was going to be a little tricky because he was a satellite buck and trailing a herd buck and his harem, this meant that we would have a lot of eyes to avoid. After a short stalk of a quarter mile or so we found ourselves out of cover, but the target buck was walking our direction so we hunkered down for a few minutes and waited. He was only about 130 yards away when I told Aaron this is it, time to shoot! To my amazement he pulls out the shooting sticks that his buddies talked him into buying a few days earlier and starts struggling to get set up on them. (In my humble opinion if your not used to shooting sticks then don't use them.) Well we are in the open now and all eyes are upon us, so after a few seconds of watching him fumble with the sticks I whispered buddy it's time to shoot. And with the sticks at an awkward angle like I have never seen before he pulls the trigger, a clean kill shot, the antelope runs a few steps and collapses. I have to backtrack a little at this point, a few months ago Aaron was struggling trying to make up his mind about what new fancy rifle to buy for this trip. I've known Aaron, his father and his grandfather for a very long time and I also knew that they had some fine whitetail rifles so I suggested that he saves his money and uses his favorite rifle. So he shows up with a Mod.70 in 243 with a modest scope on it and 100 gr. bullets. The gun was well worn but still in good shape and he had killed a bunch of whitetails with it so that made it the perfect speed goat gun for him.
I can't tell you much about the other 2 fellas and their fancy Creedmoor rigs cause I wasn't with them to witness the action but being that they were only a few miles away we could hear the shooting and suffice it to say that warning shots were fired. But all four had their antelopes by 9:00 so it was a very good morning.
On the way back to camp to hang the antelope we came across a dilemma, you see on one side of the road stood a nice looking antelope buck with tall thin horns with the paddles 3/4 of the way up the horn and flared out very sharply and on the other side of the road stood a very nice buck with classic shaped horns with nice wide paddles and some nice mass to them. It took me several minutes of going back and forth to finally decide on the classic looking buck. I parked the truck walked a short distance, found a solid rest and bang down he went. My young friend Aaron was a bit confused at first when the buck fell, he was sitting in the truck with his hands over his ears and never heard my suppressed 308 go off.
If you want the story on the deer it will have to wait. My wife just cooked up antelope tacos and I'm hungry.
