| Hunt Introduction This hunt takes place on private land in central Montana, in the Missouri River Breaks Country. I'm hunting with my friend Dwane Kiehl, who owns and operates Flatwillow Creek Outfitters, has several hundred thousand acres of good Mule Deer, Whitetail Deer, Elk and Antelope habitat. The Kiehl's lodge, where we'll be staying, is located near Winnett, Montana. We're going to try a combination of decoying, water hole and spot and stalk hunting. I hunted with Dwane this exact same period in 2001 and killed a real nice P&Y pronghorn buck by decoying him in. You can see that story by Clicking Here. Thursday A.M.  this buck has us pegged Today we planned to start out by decoying. Dwane says the bucks are usually ready to decoy by about this time of September. We tried all morning on several different nice bucks and they either just stared at us or ran the other way. The dominant bucks were letting some satellite bucks hang around with the herd, so we discovered pretty quickly that they weren't quite ready to make war with the other boys hanging around. The area we're hunting is pretty heavy with alfalfa fields, and naturally, that's where the antelope were really hanging out. In fact, they were loathe to stray very far from the fields, even when we accidentally busted them out.   we made a sneak on this group but couldn't quite close the distance gap  some of the local scenery We made several decoying tries, and several stalks, and never could quite get close enough. These fields are pretty flat, so making a stalk involves crawling down ditches bordering the fields, but the antelope aren't always where you left them upon commencing the stalk. We're going to try more of the same this evening. Thursday P.M.  we got on this high point to glass for goats This afternoon and evening we tried more spotting and stalking and decoying, with the same results as this morning - no shots within my range of about 30 yards. Among other stalks, we had a 16" buck at 40 yards, but I just wasn't comfortable with the shot so I passed on it. Tomorrow we're going to try doing some sitting in a blind on heavily used trails/fence crossings, or maybe a water hole. It's pretty cool right now and we didn't observe a whole lot of antelope coming to water like normal, so I may end up sitting a trail or fence crossing. We're also hoping that in the next day or two things will turn around and the bucks will be ready to decoy.  crawling down a ditch on a stalk    Dwane said this snake was a hog-nosed viper or also known as a puff adder There are a few other hunters in camp, and their hunt results for the day were mixed. Mostly there were several "almost" shot opportunities, and one nice buck in the 13"-14" range that was passed on. Check back for tomorrow's hunt!
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