TexasCHLforum.com

Thanks, chuckybrown! I certainly hope so! The taxidermist I'm using does great work and I know a number of his customers (who are very happy with his work), so I'm pretty excited about getting the mount when it's complete.

Thanks, fishman! Hope your neighbor enjoyed his hunt, too!

Thanks, cctcaden! I'll keep that in mind!

We went out before day-break on October 1, 2011 (opening day) to hunt pronghorn antelope. There were five hunters divided between two guides, Jeremy and Jerad, and we were hunting about 25 miles north of Dalhart, TX. My group was with Jerad, and the hunters were Jeff from Oklahoma and me. I was also accompanied by my husband as coach. The does we saw were skittish and kept running off before we could get close, taking the bucks with them. We found a very nice buck with 4 does and decided to stalk it. As soon as we got out of the truck, a coyote behind us barked loudly at us, letting everything know we were there. Our guide brought with us a hand-held 1-dimension blind that was shaped to look somewhat like the body of a cow and shield us from the antelope's view. We tried to parallel the herd from below, and walked through a sugar-sand dry stream bed to keep out of their view. As we came up the hill and got the antelope in view, there was suddenly loud banging and shooting, and a coyote was running towards the antelope. That busted the herd, and we lost any chances of getting a shot off. We continued to look for this herd and other antelope, but couldn't find any less than a mile away or that weren't running until early afternoon, when Jeff got his chance at a buck and was successful. We continued to look for awhile longer, but then had to get Jeff's antelope to storage and went to the lodge for a late lunch. We then headed back out again and found Jeremy and the other 3 hunters headed back in. Bob, the third in their group to shoot, had gotten his antelope. That only left me – it was my turn.

We looked for the herd we'd seen in the morning, but couldn't find them. After searching several pastures, our guide finally spotted a lone buck across the fence. We decided to come up on the other side of it and be downwind of it, hopefully before it crossed the ridge that was above it. We drove to where the fence had a gate, went thru it and headed northwest. We left the truck and started stalking with the cow blind. Jeff followed behind with his camera as Jerad, my husband and I crept along to where Jerad thought the antelope would come up (we were on top of the ridge, before getting to the edge). We kept creeping and looking for the buck. We were starting to think he had gone the other way after we'd gotten out of sight (before crossing the fence), when finally Jerad spotted him. He didn't appear to know we were there. We kept creeping along to the northwest until we could get to a place where we could see below the ridge, where he would appear. I got set up several times along the way, but this time, it was for real. There was so much tall grass in the way, I couldn't see while sitting down, so my husband extended the legs on my tripod and I got on my knees to see better to take the shot. When the buck came into view, he stopped and looked up in our direction. I could only see his head, aimed right towards me. He was 161 yards out. I lowered the crosshairs to the neck, squeezed the trigger and heard WHAPP!!! My husband and Jerad said he was DRT! When I stood up, I could see he was folded up where he had stood. I got him with a neckshot that hit his spine and dropped him immediately – he never moved. My husband said he never knew what hit him. It was 6:37 pm when I got him, and I was shooting a Remington 700 CDL .270 Win using Remington Core-Lokt 130 grain soft point. The gun was a joy to shoot and very accurate. Per the guides, my antelope scored 76 B&C.

As a footnote, Jerad, Jeff, my husband and I walked about 6 miles that day, stalking antelope. What a great day it was!

This was my first antelope and it was a very exciting hunt!