I had applied for & drawn a muzzleloading license for an antlerless antelope this year; I had a license for a large area of NW Colorado covering ~6 game management units which cover a few hundred square miles from the Yampa River north to the Wyoming border. The season was opening on Wednesday, October 21st.
Weather was supposed to get snowy in the high country on Tuesday night into Wednesday, but would only be rainy late Tuesday into early Wednesday up in the area I was to hunt. So after doing a last weather check on the internet on Tuesday morning, Mary & I packed up things into the motorhome, & headed out early on Tuesday afternoon, towing the 4WD Sidekick, traveling ahead of the storm's advance into the Central Rockies.
We parked our motorhome for the night about 5 miles south of Craig, close to where Hwy. 13 crosses the Yampa river. (We're not much for paying campground fees... with 90 watts of solar panels on the roof and three high capacity deep cycle batteries running most systems in the RV, we never need to plug into 'shore power, and rarely ever use the generator that's built into our motorhome.)
Wednesday morning was damp & overcast; but there was no need for an early start.... Antelope hunting is different than hunting whitetails or Elk in the woods! After a leisurely breakfast & plenty of coffee, we headed out to look for antelope on public access lands where we could set up to hunt. There were deer out and feeding on the cut hay meadows on the ranches along the highway in many places, and some antelope up & feeding in a few places, but getting to the public access hunting areas was the first order of the day. As the morning progressed, the skies cleared.
After driving north for less than an hour, we got into a large area of Public land, and a while after that we spotted a herd of about 30 antelope on a hillside about 1/2 mile off the road to the west. The setup looked good, from the perspective of the way the land rolled, for my being able to stalk in from behind that rolling ridge, coming from the north, so that I would not be in their line of sight until the last few hundred yards of the approach.
We confirmed from maps & signs that we were in an area that was open to public hunting, so we drove further north along the road until we found a place to pull off in a wide area were a side road turned off.
With winds coming from the NE, I then headed out on foot, circling first to the west & then more to the south for over a mile, to come in from the northwest / down-wind side of the antelope herd. (Mary drove the Sidekick back to a wide area along the road to watch the hunt from there.)
Since antelope have such incredible eyesight - (what's described as equivalent to a person looking through 10X binoculars), and muzzleloaders with open sights have a more limited range, I had to do some careful stalking to get in close enough to have a reasonable shot. I was also wearing the hunter's orange vest and hat wrap which are required for muzzle loader hunting here in Colorado.... and wishing that I could be hunting in full camouflage instead. But the regulations are what they are... I can work with that!
This hunt in the open sage brush country was complicated by the fact that the ground has as much low prickly pear cactus as it does sage brush, and the sage brush in this area was fairly short & sparse in places. These ground conditions would make the final stage of low profile stalking rather challenging.
When I finally worked my way over the crest of the hill to the west of where the antelope had been an hour before, I started to glass to spot the herd's sentries. I spotted one lone antelope, closer to me and well west of the rest of the animals which I could not yet see; she was already looking towards me suspiciously from about 300 yards away. She had spotted me before I spotted her, but she wasn't sure what I was yet.
As I tried to keep behind sagebrush cover enough to break up my outline while getting closer to see where the rest of the herd might be, she became even more suspicious- she knew something was on the ridge, but she wasn't sure what... but this hunt could be blown before I was anywhere near being in range. (It's happened often enough in the past; antelope hunting with a muzzleloader is typically a series of attempts to stalk within range without having the animals spot you and spook out... they will simply run away when they get too suspicious of what's going on.)
Antelope have an interesting defensive characteristic, especially when in a larger herd... they will actually chase a predator such as a coyote away from their herd, and have been observed to do it quite aggressively at times. This behavioral trait can be used to a hunter's advantage.
After watching my position behind the sage brush on the ridge for a while and trying to figure out what kind of a threat I might represent, the alert doe antelope headed back east towards the main herd. When she did, I spotted three other antelope about 400 yards to the east, closer to the top of the ridge I'd just worked my way over. Alerted by the returning doe, they were also now looking my direction suspiciously, trying to figure out what I was.
My best maneuver at this point was what I call the 'slinking away predator' move. Keeping hunched over down low and keeping my head down so that I could not be easily identified as a human, I headed away from the herd, off to the west & north-west from the watching antelope, slinking back away and over the roll of the ridge, out of their sight. (Later, Mary told me that when I headed away from them, some of the herd actually did start to follow me, as if they were going to come after me to chase me away; but they did not move too far, and the herd settled down once more into feeding again in the same area.)
Above: this is the view of my hunt from Mary's perspective a half mile away; You can see that this is open country with only the rolling of the land offering any cover other than the short sagebrush. The white specks in the center of the hillside in the middle of this photo are the herd of antelope; off to the left on the ridgeline, you can just make out my upper body silhouette as I am working my way back closer to the herd, getting ready to make the final low profile sneak. I was out of the antelope herd's line of sight when this photo was taken. (Too bad the resolution of this photo is not better- it was a long way off from where Mary watched the action unfold.)
After letting the antelope selttle down for a few minutes, I circled around back to the east, staying just over the ridge and out of sight from the herd, watching to see if any came up over the top to look for me. None showed up on the horizon, so I advanced cautiously and quietly, closing the distance to where I figured the main body of the herd was still feeding. My task was to work my way back over the ridge and within shooting range without spooking an already somewhat alert herd.
After moving far enough back to the east while staying well out of sight behind the ridge from the herd, I started working my way back over to the herd's side of the ridge. Progress slowed as I approached closer; I would proceed a few steps in a low hunched over position, then slowly start to straighten up enough to glass with my binoculars through the tops of the sage brush, watching for the first glimpse of the sentries on the herd's fringes. Then I would slowly hunch back down to ease in a bit farther. I was still keeping to the west of the herd, downwind from them, so that they could not catch my scent- ( that would be a deal breaker for sure.)
Once I spotted the back of the first animal on the far edge of a shallow bowl on the ridge side, I knew I needed to work my way in another 70 yards or more in order to be within reasonable range of some of the animals. The short sagebrush is both a help, from a cover standpoint, as well as a bit of a challenge as far as being able to find a clear place to shoot. It's just all a part of this kind of a hunt- part of the challenge.
This is where the prolific growth of low prickly pear became a substantial consideration of how I could move; a full low crawl was completely out of the question, so I had to work along carefully on my hands and my knees, spending two-thirds of my time watching the ground for cactus parts, and the other third of the time keeping track of where the alert antelope were watching, and not giving them an identifiable silhouette to confirm their suspicions. Part way through the final approach, I took off my large camo belt pack, and left it behind to further reduce my silhouette.
A smaller group of only four or five antelope might have fled at the first indications of danger; they are an animal that loves to run, and runs to live. But there seems to be more of a sense of security within a larger herd. This was something I'd watched over many years of antelope hunting, and was now partially depending upon to help me. If they would not move out too soon, I still might be able to work in closer to get a reasonable shot. There were 30 sets of eyes to share in the watching, too, so I had to move carefully, freezing for minutes at a time when animals were staring in my direction. I would never raise my head above the sage brush, looking through the cover instead to keep my silhouette broken up.
As I worked my way into a position to get a look at more and more of the antelope, another issue came up; there were many younger buck antelope within this herd. Since I had an antlerless license, I needed to be sure that the antelope I was going to shoot was not one of the young bucks. With all of the sagebrush obscuring my vision as well as theirs, I was trying to do a lot of glassing to sort out the bucks from the does in the fragments of the herd that I could now get a bit of a look at through the cover.
I had moved in where I was looking through the sage tops & breaks at antelope at a distance of about 150 yards away; others which were closer were below my line of sight. Ideally, I'd like to get closer to them before taking a shot. But a few of the members of this herd were getting more uneasy than others- too many eyes were watching my position from many directions!
Finally, animals started moving to my right; there was some indecisive milling, then the entire herd broke into a run, heading to the west, to my right. This brought most of the animals crossing across the gradual slope below me between 120 and 140 yards away, running at roughly 25 miles per hour or more. I spent what seemed like a lot of time picking out an antlerless animal that was separated from the other running antelope so that I would not accidentally also hit another, and swung with her to make my shot.
The .50 caliber roared and I rocked back a bit; a cloud of smoke obscured my view for a few seconds. When the smoke cleared, the antelope was down, while the rest of the herd was still running off to the west.
You just have to love it when a hunt works out the way you planned! Sure, I'd love to get an easy standing shot at 100 yards or less.... But this long approach & two-stage stalk to get within decent shooting range, then making a freehand shot at a running antelope at about 120 yards was the culmination of a very satisfying hunt!
Mary managed to drive the Sidekick in on a gas pipeline road to within 400 yards below where the antelope went down, so after dressing it out, it was a relatively easy job to drag it down to the vehicle.
We traveled to a resteraunt in Baggs, Wyoming for lunch before returning to our camping spot of the night before. Then we skinned out and boned out the antelope, packing large ziplock bags of meat in lots of ice in a cooler. We spent another comfortable night there before making our leisurely way back east into the high country & home the following day. In the low country, cottonwoods along the rivers were in full golden color.
We came back east over Vail pass, then headed south over Hoosier pass. At the higher elevations, there was about 6 inches of fresh snow along the shoulders and coating the trees, promising that full winter was not far off. The photo below is the view of Quandry Mountain near Hoosier Pass, one of Colorado's 14,000+ foot peaks. It was a beautiful drive home!
All in all, it was a beautiful trip, and a great antelope hunt with the muzzleloader!
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Copyright 2009 by Bruce and Mary Stenulson, Fairplay, Colorado; All Rights Reserved.