USA: Weekend With ActionBob

[gizmo]

Many months ago @ActionBob and I were talking about how fun an antelope hunt would be. Now I have wanted to shoot a pronghorn for forever and 5 days. We have pronghorn in my part of Texas but the tags are next to impossible to get. I've been trying for many years to get one and finally, through the help of my local taxidermist Frank Williams I was able to get not one but two tags! I sent Bob a message and told him I had found some and he was as excited about it as I was. The ranch was only about 45 minutes from my house too which was great. So Bob arrived last Friday evening and I drug him to our local high school football homecoming game. My daughter was in the marching band so Bob being a good sport let me drag him along. Bob is a great guy and super fun to hang out with. Saturday morning we woke up at about six to head out. We stopped by a good friend of mine's and picked him up. He is an outfitter also and we guide for each other when we need help. His name is Justin Daniel and he guided me on my aoudad hunt several years back. We've known each other about ten years as he was a policeman too for several years. Anyway, we headed out and found antelope right off the bat. There was a herd of at least a dozen does with one real good buck on a cut cornfield. On the other side of the field there were six more bucks but they were all young. The buck that was with the does was an absolute stud for a panhandle pronghorn. As we were trying to make a plan to get to with in shooting range a down poor came up and it rained cats and dogs for a while. The pronghorn bedded down in the field and stayed put. As soon as the rain stopped we made it up to a hay stack which we used for cover. I ranged him at well over 500 yards. We sat tight and were patient while he finally worked back towards us. i got a range of 446 yards on him and Bob pulled off a spectacular shot hitting him just a bit low but with much effect. I could see blood poring out of him from that distance and he laid down. Bob fired some followup shots, the wind was howling and it was cold and wet. He missed but it had to be one of the most difficult shooting situations one could encounter. Well, the buck got back up and hobbled west and the chase was on, he was hit hard and couldnt hardly run. We caught up to him and got to within 150 or so yards and Bob weigh laid him dropping him in his tracks. Bob in the other thread was being modest and I can assure you his first shot on that buck was one of the best I have ever seen. He shot that buck at that distance in the rain and howling wind off a dinky monopod (I forgot my sticks back at the ranch). It was a shining example of excellent marksmanship. I'm just grateful I was able to witness it.
More to come....

 

[siml]

And the pics....?

 

[gizmo]

 

[gizmo]

Sorry was having trouble getting them to load.

 

[gizmo]

His pronghorn was a beast, and had some really cool character to him. He also had some scars and hair missing from fighting other bucks for the right to woo the ladies. Just a really cool animal and spectacular trophy.

 

[siml]

Nicely done, Bob.

 

[gizmo]

After his was down we headed back to town and ran over to Frank's place to get him skinned out for taxidermy and quartered up for the freezer. Once this was done we headed back out and went back to the same field. There is a lot of antelope in this particular area so we went back to the same place and found two more but they were does. We were watching the area where the pronghorn enter the corn field at when the land owner came up to check and see how we were doing. He was a very nice man and told us he had just seen another herd of them on another field that had alfalfa on it. He told us there was a good buck in the group an led us over there. Well sure enough there is another group and another really good buck in with them. They spooked and started to run but were running right at us. I found the buck and there were does runing all around infront of and behind him. As they ran the does finally cleared and I shot. My first shot hit him real low but it definitely slowed him down. He continued to try and run to the neighboring property and I managed to shoot again double lunging him. He fell stone dead as he made it to the fence and tried to go under it. We loaded him up and went to the land owner's feed yard for some pictures and celebratory high fives and back slaps. We had two great pronghorn down before lunch!!!!

 

[gizmo]

 

[petrusg]

Nice!!

 

[siml]

Great double for the day.

 

[gizmo]

Pronghorn are really cool little critters and are very unique. From my understanding they really dont have any true relatives anywhere and if I'm not mistaken the chamios is the closest relative and its a very very distant cousin. I'm not sure if that's absolute fact or not so don't quote me but I seem to remember hearing that on a discovery special one time. Off to Franks again we go for the same ritual. After that we went back to my house and showered and ate some dinner. Bob asked if we could go to my ranch the next day and check it out and maybe glass some sheep. Over night I began to get pretty sick and apparently something I ate didn't agree with me. I'll spare you the gory details but by the time 6.a.m rolled around I was in a pretty bad way. We were a little slow leaving due to my digestive issues but we made our way down to the ranch. I was dying and Bob offered to drive the rest of the way so I could take a nap. By the time we hit Turkey and he woke me up I was starting to feel a little better. We got to the lodge and I showed him around. We were standing on the porch and I could see a couple of hogs hunckered down in some tall grass on the other side of a farm field below the lodge. We got the spotting scope out and confirmed it but they were way to far away to be able to get a shot with less than anything other than a anti aircraft cannon. I dont seem to have one of those and perhaps I should start looking for one. Never know when one would come in handy. We jumped in the pickup and drove around looking for some pigs but no luck. We were a little late getting down there and the tracks showed the hogs had come and gone already. After this we went over to the northern part of my property to look for some sheep. Not a hundred yards inside the gate two monster black Hawaiians and two very nice Texas Dalls were cleaning up a bit of cake my ranch manager had put out for the cows in front of the cattle pens. Bob really liked the Dalls, one old ram in particular who had a really nice set of curls but his body was starting to show the signs of age. Just a great old ram. We let them go on their way and drove around looking for more sheep. We saw some monster rambo rams but there was another group that I wanted him to see that had some nice painted desserts in it. We drove to the back part of the property where the canyon has a really nice point on it great for glassing from. It's my favorite view on the whole ranch and the sheep and some of the catalina goats tend to hang out in that particular area. On the way there, way off in the distance I caught some movement and stopped to glass, a group of catalinas were walking between some cedar trees and we glassed them and I took some time to explain a little about them. After this we kept on going and reached the look out point on the canyon rim.

 

[gizmo]

Sure enough in the very bottom was the group and the two paints were in it. They spooked and made their way up the other side of the canyon. We looked them over and talked about the paints for a bit. In the back part of the group was a ancient corsican ram I havent seen in probably 6 or 8 months. I had thought he had died of old age or fell victim to coyotes months ago but there he was. He's nothing special and well past his prime, one of his horns has a good chunk of it broken off. Ive never much liked that ram as he's beat up and broken some really nice rams in the past few years. He's really become a thorn in my side but he's definitely an old warrior. I told Bob that he could have him as a cull if he wanted him as I'd really like to get rid of him. Several people have tried to kill that old ram over the last couple of years but he's smart and always seems to be one step ahead. We talked about it for a bit and decided to try and get on the big Dall and then come back and try to locate the old Corsican ram after the Dall was down. We headed back to where we had seen the Dall at and they were no where to be found. ????? We started looking for them but they seemed to have vanished. We looked for quite a while but no luck. It was well past time for them to be moving around and I figured they had moved off into the rough stuff to bed down for the afternoon. At one point I thought I heard something moving through an area behind a water trough, we went to investigate but no luck. We drove around for a while longer and went back to the water hole and up to the east to see if they had slipped around behind us. Nothing, we looked through another deep draw and still nothing. By this time I was feeling a bit better and we decided to head back to the lodge for a lunch and a break. As we were heading out, sure enough they stepped out of some thick stuff behind the water hole. We had to have been standing on top of them at one point but never saw them. Sure enough the big old Dall was with them and we bailed out of the truck and made a staulk up to them. We were able to use some mesquite to sneak in real close. I put the sticks up and Bob got up on the rifle. We waited for what felt like forever trying to get a clear shot. Sheep are flock animals and they tend to ball up. It can be incredibly difficult to get a clear shot and when you do it's not there for long. Finally after about twenty years he cleared the other rams and as I was starting to say shoot him Bob's Creedmore barked hitting the ram through both lungs and center punching the heart. The old ram took off but only made is 20 or so yards before falling over dead as chivalry. I went back and got the truck and Bob recovered his ram. The sheep was a fantastic old ram. We loaded him up and skinned him out before eating some lunch.
More to come but it's 2 am and I'll pick it back up tomorrow.

 

[gizmo]

 

[gizmo]

One cool thing about this ram is that he had a matching set of very unique growth rings on each horn. We looked at them quite a while and I initially thought they were cracks from fighting until we really got to looking at them. Very unique but in hindsight I never thought to take a picture of it.

 

[KMG Hunting Safaris]

Nicely done fellas!

 

[BRICKBURN]

I was a little worried about the thread title for a minute...

Nice lopes. Congrats guys.

 

[siml]

no Brickburn , I can't picture Bob and Eric...

 

[Royal27]

Great hunt and congrats!!!

@TMS I don't think Bob could handke the Copenhagen.

 

[Witold Krzyżanowski]

Nice hunting report Eric.. Congrats.
Witold

 

[Bullthrower338]

Did you guys get to Creedmore some bunnies?
Great ram guys!