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Friday A.M.
This morning, we placed a double bull pop-up blind twenty yards downwind of an inccredible antelope fence crossing, down the hill from an irrigated alfalfa field. Every time we drove past the alfalfa field, it was thick with antelope. Since our decoying didn't have much success yesterday, we decided to do some blind hunting. I sat the blind form about 8 AM until 3 PM and while I saw a good number of antelope (including a few nice bucks), the seemed to be a little bit wary of the blind and wouldn't come any closer than about 70 yards. Instead of using the fence crossing where I was, most of them were crossing about 100 yards further down the fence. Once or twice, a hounded doe would run from a buck and bring him within 50 yards or so of my blind, but never close enough to my maximum shooting range. By mid-afternoon, it was clear to me that the antelope were probably going to take a day or two to get used to a blind being next to their trail before using it again. Unfortunately, that amount of time was a luxury I couldn't afford on such a short hunt.  the view from inside my blind  my blind was set up 20 yards from this antelope trail   not quite close enough Friday P.M. This afternoon, we decided to try some unorthodox hunting methods. Dwane recommended that he do an antelope "push." Myself and one other hunter would post ourselves on trails leaving the alfalfa field. Dwane would do a one man drive from over a mile away trying to push any antelope in the alfalfa field past our positions. Herding antelope, though, is a lot like herding cats - not a very easy task. It seemed to us the most logical thing for the antelope to do would be to run in the opposite direction of the "driver." In this case, though, they tried to run around him instead of away from him. At one point, I could see Dwane start running trying to cut the antelope off and while Dwane is in tip-top shape and quite a sprinter, he was still no match for the antelope, who snickered as they trotted past him. I did have a few doe antelope that managed to run past me, but no shooter bucks.  antelope trails  Later that evening, Duane set me up on another crossing. There were two gates open all the time on different sides of the road and antelope used those open gates as a travel corridor to cross the road. There was a large group of bushes about 20 yards from the crossing and I sat there for about the last hour of legal shooting light. Shortly before dark, a young antelope buck crossed in front of me at about 20 yards, broadside. He only had about 7 inch horns, so I didn't shoot, but I did get a picture of him.  the little buck I passed on this evening The weather today was pretty rough with lots of wind and off and on rain, so the antelope weren't neccesarily in their normal routine. Check back for tomorrow's hunt!
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