2009 Mule Deer - Day 2

Day two started well before dawn. The cabin was actually a quite comfortable ~60 degrees and my brother's bedrolls kept things even warmer. The temperature outside was a balmy 12 degrees and the creek outside was frozen over. We couldn't get the portable stove to work so it was turkey sandwiches for breakfast. We suited up and hopped in the truck to drive towards Windy Gap and glass Siard and Cabin Creeks from high ground.

We parked the truck just above some Quaking Aspens which gave a good view of a large area of upper Siard Creek. Along the top edge of the hill were some large flat boulders which I set the spotting scope on. I glassed the valley first with binoculars and didn't see anything. I then grabbed the spotting scope, set it to 30 power and focused in on the valley floor. Scanning right to left (east to west) I looked passed a small clump of mountain Mahogany. Just as the clump was about to leave field of view of the scope I caught movement. Some antlers... Some BIG antlers. Focusing in more on the buck I counted 5 points on the right and 4 on the left, but it was tough to be sure at 740 yds. The buck started up the valley to the west on our side of the creek. It crested a small hill and disappeared in some tall sagebrush.

At this point the full gear came out. I grabbed my license & tags, knife, walkie-talkie and headset and my brother's rifle. We got a quick radio check and I set off hiking down to the deer. Doug was keeping an eye on where the buck disappeared and talking to me the whole way down. It was a steep slope with a drop of about 500 feet vertically and covered with ankle-deep snow. When I got the bottom of the first draw I noticed a doe about 40 yards to my left staring at me. It was the most amazing thing as she didn't jump or bound away, but just stared at me as I walked past her.

Climbing up a small hill my brother had to guide me a little as every thing looked different down there. When I got to the top of the hill I started to head upstream in the direction I thought the buck went. Doug told me that he disappeared about 20 yards to my east. I looked at the waist-high sagebrush and figured there was no way he was in there. I took 3 steps in that direction and BOOM!!! up jumped the buck!!! I raised the rifle, got nothing but a bounding hide in the scope as I squeezed off the first shot. The buck kept running.

My brother chimed in my ear, "Did you get him?" I couldn't answer as the buck was still running and I didn't have a free hand to key the mic. After running about 85 yards, the buck stopped in a perfect broadside pose about 50 feet in elevation above me. I raised the gun squeezed the trigger and 'click'. Rats! forgot to reload. The buck was still standing there so I put the crosshairs right on the top of his shoulders, breathed and fired. I didn't hear the bullet hit anything and the buck shot off down through the creek and up the opposite bank. I quickly reloaded and got to a position to take another shot. He was now at least 200 yards away, running up the steep north slope of the valley. I took a hail-Mary shot and missed again. One more bullet left. I reloaded, steadied the rifle above the buck and let him run right into the crosshairs. As soon as his nose hit the crosshairs, I squeezed again. Click. I cursed and opened the bolt to see there were no more bullets in the gun. I asked Doug how many he had loaded. He swore there were 4 in the gun. The buck disappeared over the hill. He was gone.

The long, hard hike back to the truck was rough. After laying down in the snow to cool off for a while, I finally got back to the truck after about 30 minutes of hiking. I took everything off but my pants and boots in an attempt to cool off. It had warmed up to 25 degrees and the sweat was pouring off of me. We gathered up our stuff and hit the road back to Reno. Such a fun hunt and it was too bad we had to cut it short. Of course, on the way back we saw a bunch of deer herds, but they were all on private property and we were time compressed to meet our folks and get back to Doug's house.

Maybe next year...

2009 Mule Deer - Day 1

I landed in Reno at 6:40 am. Long night of flying but got some sleep enroute. My brother picked me up and we drove up to his house to load up all the hunting gear. We opted to stop at Sheels in Sparks before driving 4 hours up to the Santa Rosas. Got some very useful long-range walkie-talkies and hit the road.

We got to the hunting cabin at Siard Creek around 2pm. The cabin was a mess of rodent droppings and rat's nests. It took about 2.5 hours to clean it all up and get a good fire going in the stove. While it was still in the upper 50's outside, we knew the night was going to get down in the teens.

We then set out hiking up the southern slope of Siard Creek. Our first thought was that we were happy all the cattle that were there back in Antelope season were gone. We had hiked about 3/4 of a mile when we crept into a marshy area of Quaking Aspens. The Quakies weren't that tall but we figured we'd poke around a little. A few steps into the glade a doe and fawn spooked and trotted away from us at about half-sprint. They only ran about 100 yds then stopped to forage and look back at us. We figured it was a good chance they were the same pair we ran into back in Antelope season.

After seeing nothing else moving, we headed back to the cabin. My brother had to call his wife at home so we got in the truck and drove 30 minutes to where we could get a signal. Long story short -- we were going to have to head back to Reno the next day so he could take care of some pressing issues at home.

Made it back to the cabin around 8 and stoked the fire to keep it warm. It was getting down in the upper 20's outside and a good roaring fire would keep us toasty for the night. When we opened the stove the amount of smoke that belched out filled the cabin to the point our eyes were tearing up and we couldn't breathe. We got the fire going, but had to air the cabin out which got it very cold.

2009 Pronghorn Antelope - Day 2

***Work in progress****

Up and at it by 5:30! Late start. Headed straight down to the cut-off to National Canyon and cut over to Eight Mile Canyon. Flats were filled with hunters so decided to head up to National Mine and look down on everything. Trek was slow, but we made it to the top around 8:00. Made a short hike to the edge of the hill to glass the valley 2,000 feet below. Nothing moving except a small Horned Toad we found sneaking around the pick-up truck. Hmmm.

Decided to head up and over Windy Gap and scope out the inter-range uplands. While they are higher in altitude than the valley floor and foothills (approx 6700'), we were confident that Antelope would be up that high. Just over Windy Gap we took a ill-advised detour along an unnamed creek valley that runs parallel to the main road. It is full of Quaking Aspens that have nearly overgrown the road. These left some undesired pin-stripes along the side of my brother's truck. After exploring an abandoned hunting shack and a remote snowfall monitoring station, we came out above the No. Fork of Cabin Creek. After 20 minutes of glassing the canyon we cursed all the cattle and pressed over to NFD-531. We figured it was Sunday, what road construction crew works on Sunday?

Decided we were tired of driving and stopped at Saird Creek to hike up it. The hike was fairly easy initially as there was an old Jeep trail to follow. After about a mile I saw movement ahead about 120 yards. We froze and I put binocular to face. A Muley doe with her fawn had wandered into the valley from a small watershed. She had rounded a small knoll and didn't even notice us. They were walking slowly, foraging as they went. When they got to about 80 yards from us the doe perked up and started scanning the direction her nose led her. I'm still convinced she didn't see us, even though we were in plain sight. They flollowed the small creek bed past us and up over a hill, never really paying much heed to us.

2009 Pronghorn Antelope - Day 1

Based on reports from family and friends as well as our own experience, we set out from McDermitt on the 2009 Antelope season at 5:00 am with the full expectation that we would have a buck in the truck by 8:00 am. Our first destination was the “Apple Orchard”. It is an old homestead at the mouth of National Canyon with a few apple trees, some cotton woods and a stone house that lost its roof probably a half-century ago. The stream there flows year-round, but in August its just a trickle and dries up as soon as it leaves the mouth of the canyon. Between the Apple Orchard and the canyon just to the north are where we’d seen and heard reports of a large herd. Before heading north, however we decided to press into National Canyon with plans on driving up to the old National Mine. We had seen a few Pronghorns up there as well as Bighorn Sheep so it was worth a peek. As we got about a mile into the canyon we came across a hunting camp and decided that we didn’t want to head up the canyon any further and disturb the hunters. Turning back around, we were determined to head north up to Eight-Mile Canyon and find “The Herd”.

After getting jostled around on a fence-line road for about 20 minutes, we crested the same hill we had the year before, fully expecting to see the same large herd sitting there waiting to be ‘thinned’. No such luck. Instead, we spied 3 hunters riding ATVs who apparently had the same expectations we had. We turned around and decided to head south to Indian Creek Canyon. Enroute we saw 3 more groups of hunters scouring the plains and hills for Antelope. The discussion in our truck was now focused on the idea of why everyone decides to hunt on opening weekend and why couldn’t they all just wait for us to get one first.

We decided to cross Indian Creek at the mouth of the canyon and take a couple shots at some structures of an abandoned mine. From across the valley Doug sighted in a metal plate. We guessed it was about 250 yards away. He took a shot and it hit right in the center. Feeling confident it was properly sighted-in we got back in the truck. This is where he made the grave mistake of placing the gun between the drivers seat and the center console of the truck. But more on this later...

The only thing we had seen moving all morning was hunters and cattle, so we decided to head south along US 95 to an area notorious for Antelope. Amongst all the locals, there was a consensus that Antelope were everywhere between Horse Canyon and NV 140. That is until Day One of Antelope season as we saw only hunters and cattle there as well.

At this point we decided to head up to the east side of the Santa Rosa range and look into finding another herd we’d seen there the previous year. It was an even split in distance to head back up north and shoot through Windy Gap or south and around to Paradise Valley. We decided on the Paradise Valley route as it was country we had not seen that day. We did not see anything in field or glen the whole trip around to Paradise and started heading up into the hills. More hunters were spotted as soon as we left paved road, but we took comfort in the fact that they had not seen anything either. Up over Hinkey Summit on NFD-084 (also known as NV 290) and down past Lye Creek were pretty, but devoid of all life except for cattle, which we started referring to as ‘cowalopes’.

We finally made it to the cut-off to the No. Fork of Cabin Creek and pushed a few cowalopes out of the way to get to an area we deemed good for glassing the vale. After 20 minutes of glassing cattle, cattle, and more cattle it was plain that the Antelopes were not here at present. Decision time… Do we head east to the flats of eastern Humboldt County or up over Windy Gap and back down into the area we started in? East it was. After a little back-tracking we jumped on NFD-531 with the ultimate destination of Calico Ranch. We paid scant attention to the ‘Road Close due to Construction’ sign at the start of NFD-531. After all, who closes a dirt road for construction? Scanning and glassing a mere 7 miles led us past more hunters and cowalopes but not our primary objective. We entered the No. Fork of the Little Humboldt River at Stocks Creek and found that the road was indeed under construction with a full crew digging up embankments and smoothing out the ford on both sides of the river. Frustration set in as it was now nearly noon and the location we desired to get to was the one place we couldn’t get to easily. Quinn River Rd was a mere 10 miles away but to get to it required some serious four-wheeling or an 80 mile detour. We opted for the latter, knowing it would be easily a 3 to 4 hour detour.

Back to NFD-084 and up over Windy Gap to US 95 we went. We made the first turn onto Fort McDermitt Paiute Indian Reservation and followed the Quinn River past Devils Gate onto the high desert of eastern Humboldt County. Along the way we stopped to take a few photos of the rattle snake that tried to bite the truck tires. Following Quinn River Rd around to Calico Ranch we saw more hunters and stopped to talk to a couple retired Navy folks out of Fallon who were coming up from Paradise Valley. They had been up and down the east side without sighting anything. This was discouraging and encouraging at the same time. Discouraging as our hopes of coming over to the high desert seemed like a mistake more than a good idea. Encouraging, as the saying goes, ‘misery loves company’. After 20 minutes of chatting we pressed south towards the cutoff towards Elko county, figuring no one would go to the extreme eastern edge of the hunt area. We were wrong as we saw no fewer than 3 groups of hunters towing campers and trailers laden with ATVs. The 7 mile detour was fruitless and we opted to head back to Quinn River Rd. There we made a decision to head south as far as the No. Fork of the Little Humboldt River, then turn around and head back home. We crossed the Little Owyhee River and shook our fists at the turn off to NFD-531 that we were on a mere 4 hours earlier. There was no road construction sign on this side of the mountains and we felt sorry for those souls that had tried the road from this side only to get turned around again like us.

Amazingly enough, we crested a hill that brought us in sight of Antelope Springs when my brother Doug hit the brakes. In the waning light he had gotten sight of 7 Pronghorns crossing the road about 300 yards below us. He grabbled his rifle and started walking obliquely towards the direction they were walking. I dropped a GPS mark on our location, got in the truck and continued to drive down towards where the Antelope had crossed the road, hoping to prevent them from running away from Doug and just maybe convincing them we were not interested in them. I got out of the truck and attempted to track them in the hard, dry soil with limited success. Doug was out of sight over the ridge but I had a general idea of where he was walking.

After about 500 yards of hiking, I had lost the trail, but Doug and I were now in sight. I was slightly south of his position and we were both looking up and down a shallow wash for any sign of our prey. We determined that we would have easily seen them if they had exited the vale upslope to the north so we headed into some low sage towards the south. Cresting a small ridge, we got sight of them about 300 yards to the south at the base of a small knoll. I immediately hit the dirt. My brother was frozen in place as they had been looking in my direction and not his. I shout-whispered if he had a shot? He shook his head in the negative. On all fours, I crawled over to his position where he was standing as still as Michaelangelo's David. I popped my head up to get a peek and, BAM! they took off running.

At this point I'd like to insert lesson #1 I learned about hunting Pronghorn Antelope. Their eyesight is touted as excellent in many references. I'd like to clarify. What they excel at is seeing movement, not actual contrasting shapes.

We took off walking at a brisk pace, hoping they would stop running when they got on the back-side of the small knoll. When we got down there however we caught sight of them in the distance trotting off at about 800 yards and opening. In the failing light we decided to give up the chase and return the truck, now about 3/4 mile away.

To finish off the night we stopped in the local bar in Paradise Valley where we ran into some old friends who were there. Some of them worked for the Forrest Service and reported seeing Antelope in various locations, but nothing definite. Over a beer we also learned that Rocky Mountain Elk had migrated into the Santa Rosa range the previous winter. While this may seem like a small factoid, I'll note that since time immemorial, Elk have NEVER been seen in the Santa Rosa range. This brought up a discussion of their possible pressure on Mule Deer habitat which invariable led to a discussion on Wolves that have been reported returning to the area as well.

We left there and proceeded back to McDermitt for the night. All told, we had driven more than 200 miles and had seen a total of 7 Antelopes. Very discouraging for an opening day.

Pronghorn Antelope - Notes from a first-timer.

The first thing I learned on a recent hunting trip is that Pronghorn Antelope are elusive. Elusive is just one word to choose from. Others may include sneaky, cunning, unpredictable, frustratinglydevious (ok, I tried to make that one word). This was my first time hunting them and I approached the hunt with some very erroneous pre-conceived notions. The first was that it would be easy to find them.

In previous years, while hunting Mule Deer, my brother and I had seen Antelope everywhere. One evening whilst driving along the foothills on the west side of the Santa Rosa range in northern Nevada, we crested a small hill and were amazed. Sprawling before us about a half mile away was a meandering herd of about 125 Pronghorns. They took little notice of us as they went about foraging for their evening meal. My brother drove the vehicle forward towards the herd. They lazily moved out of the way of the truck as if they were cattle and not North America’s fastest animal.

Another time hunting Mule Deer we came across a smaller herd early in the morning. This herd had about 15 Antelope in it with a few large bucks and does. They were walking single-file through a small glade just to the left of our truck. Without even paying a scant glance, they walked within 50 yards of us. I actually leaned over my brother, who was driving, and snapped off a few pictures with my cell phone camera.

The second pre-conceived notion I had about hunting Antelope is that they would be easy to shoot. The two examples I mentioned above are just a sampling of my previous experience with these animals. Locals filled our minds of sightings of herds, large and small, that were right along the highway, watching traffic roll by. “I could’ve thrown a rock and hit one” was one account from a local Forrest Service employee. Perhaps I may be just a very unlucky hunter (which is closer to the truth than blaming it on a lack of skill) but most of our shots at Antelope were very challenging and at ranges that would make a seasoned Mule Deer hunter cringe. Before I get to the actual shots, lets talk about the hunts first.