Western Rookie - Long Time Antelope Tags

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2:02all right everybody welcome back to another episode of the western rookie podcast and by the time this episode launches we are going to be full steam ahead into the western seasons man i mean like when this when this uploads the the elk rut is probably going to be close to being over or the main part of it there's probably going to be the past uh... you know mule deer rut is going to be starting to ramp up across the uh... across the the western and even like into canada which we're going to talk about today and can when do anilope usually right do you happen to know that the the peak rut from what i determined while i was up there i was up there a little early uh... so the peak rut would have been like after the 20th until now and we're starting to taper off on the back end of it uh... they've moved into the rifle season now so the rifle season is kind of the the tail end of the atlop rut up here uh... it may be different in uh... as you move

3:04further south into the states but kind of how they how works here yep perfect and so today we are going to talk with it's ken hessie right ken has ken has i knew that i knew that ken has from alberta about his basically i don't want to say once in a lifetime uh... anilope on it but you got the opportunity to pull a tag uh... that is fairly rare to get and uh... we're going to talk about that today other than that you you're on a roll because you killed an anilope then you killed a giant white tail um... and we're going to talk about that buck on the nine finger chronicles podcast when i get back from my mule deer hunt and uh... and then we'll break down that conversation but other than those two animals what else do you have on the schedule for this fall i don't know i have so much time i don't know what to do with myself anymore it's

4:06the first time i had been tagged out this early in the season uh... we have some opportunity for loose in the boson uh... by edmonton and uh... there's another uh... buck tag that i can use in the boson as well but i have to try and find some permission in the boson uh... before i can do that uh... which is very very difficult but that tag also does not start until october 25th okay so i am focused on my little 12 year old niece will be hunting this year so i'm trying to find her a good buck trying to find a good buck for my wife and just kind of watching what's going on and making and taking advantage of all of my free time that i don't know what to do is that so you're you're going with the flow basically out yeah that's awesome in that's awesome um... so congratulations on uh... you know a good fall i i don't know if i've ever been tagged out so early that i didn't know what to do with like do you have any like do tags that you're

5:13allowed to use and go hunt does i do you have a do take i do you have a do tag there's just most of the areas i hunt i don't feel like there's a high enough dope population to start shooting does the one property there is um... i'm going to try because it's a tag that doesn't really matter too too much to me i'm going to try to take my three and a half year old out and do a couple sits i don't imagine that's going to turn out very successful but i just want him to be out i want him to have fun bring some snacks and try he's really good when we sent watch tv and we're watching hunting and stuff and he just like whispers back and forth when we're on the coach and he he does try to do the hunting thing and whispered be quiet when there's a deer there on tv and uh... it's pretty funny but we'll see how that turns out i just want to get him out and get experiencing it and see how uh... you know that turns out well this i mean all you got to do is tell him hey we're not sitting on the couch today we're going real life hunting today and we'll see how he

6:15see how he handles the element so to speak yeah he loves being outside so we'll get him out there probably put him in the backpack to carry him in i get a backpack to carry the kids around so i'll take him in with that and take a couple stools with us we can sit and sit in the grass and sit with our binoculars and see how he reacts to that we'll probably be out for more than 45 minutes but it is what it has been that's better than zero right yeah all right um all right so we got we got a you got a story to tell us about this analo punt that you went on but before we get into the meat and potatoes of today's episode i do want to send a shout out to our partners at here on the western rookie podcast uh... first partner of the day is montana decoys so a montana decoy is a light very packable very high definition print on the fabric that they use very durable product that's easy to move around so basically what you want to do is you want to go to montana decoy

7:21dot com and check out their entire lineup of elk decoys white tail mule deer analogue they even have have you can't have you ever seen that strategy by people getting behind a cow decoy or sometimes people even use a horse and they'll use like livestock to get close to them they even have like a couple cow decoys that they wish I hadn't that last week yeah yep and so uh uh uh uh a cow decoy montana decoy dot com go check it out i just got my i just got an order of my wasp archery uh brought heads in the mail yesterday and now i cannot wait to get them on my arrows i've been using the three blade jackhammer for every mule deer hunt i've ever been on for almost 13 or 14 seasons of maybe even more now of white tail hunting and it's just uh

8:25wasp archery just makes a good product right but i'll just tell you what my favorite head is it's the it's the jackhammer three blade and it destroys whatever it touches right and so that's a head where you hit a marginal shot maybe it's back in the liver back in the guts it's going to do a ton of damage that deer doesn't want to really run it wants to go lay down uh and just die on those on those shots now when you hit the heart when you hit the lungs and it's a really good shot well the blood trails are easy and easy to follow and uh most of the time if i do it right i can watch them die within sight so uh go check out wasp archery.com for their full lineup of i guess it would be fixed in mechanical brought heads i also like the boss for blade that's a very durable head and a majority of their heads are still made in the united states of america and that's a big selling point for me so wasp archery.com discount code nfc20 can you ready i am absolutely ready so

9:31when i talked to you earlier this year you were saying you were hoping i hope i draw this anilote tag okay and you you mentioned now that it's been 14 seasons that you've tried to collect points is it was it a is it a preference point tag or was it a lottery? it's a preference point tag system saw i probably could have pulled it two years ago ish i wanted to do the rifle tag first get used i've never hunted antelope before so we did the rifle tag in 2020 for trophy antelope uh and then last year we did non-trophy which is the dose so we all had a tag for that and then with that experience i wanted to use that before i did archery because definitely the most challenging way to hunt antelope is with archery and i was definitely re-taught that lesson when i went down there i felt last couple weeks and it was a very humbling

10:34experience going down and chasing antelope where there is no cover it is quite different than chasing anything else that i have tried in my hunting career right so you said a couple things you said you wanted to go with a rifle and usually it's the rifle tags that are more coveted because it's an easier weapon at a longer distance and therefore it takes longer to get those tags is was this a completely different part of alberta that you were hunting rifle versus archery? no i did all three of these tags all in the same zone uh each time i went down the rifle one when we went in 2020 uh i think that was more like the covid time frame so there wasn't a lot of people that were going out that year that's why we did go out that year uh we were able to lucky enough to be able to get away so we pulled that one and ended up being early we were all successful pulling the tag me and my stepfather went down or are i went a couple days early did a pile of scouting drove

11:413,000 kilometers in three days driving around trying to locate good bucks and there's not really any other way to do it so you have to cover the kind of territory so we got that one out of the way uh and then antelope uh for non-trophy last year was a similar thing didn't have to try as hard to do so locating just needed to find stuff that was off the beaten path and that everybody was going to be on top of at the same time opening morning okay so did you have 14 preference points to draw this tag okay so how did you get a rifle tag then an archery tag was it i guess i'm confused they have three different they have three different tag setups so there's a the rifle one is considered trophy uh antelope and there's a non-trophy antelope and an archery antelope tag and you can put in for all three of them every year but you can only you can build a preference point

12:43on all three every year but you can only pull one tag at a time okay all right so it took you 14 years of building preference points for this archery for the archery antelope one and i cool shot i could have shot a buck or doe that didn't really matter on size uh because waiting that long i definitely wanted to shoot a buck it didn't really matter what size definitely tried for the largest possible but was quickly humbled yeah so why why is it that this specific antelope archery tag takes so long to draw there's not very many tags available i think for archery they only give out in the there's three zones that i'm allowed to hunt in and i think there was only 40 archery uh tags in those three zones and those zones are very large i think there's five or six different areas for antelope uh tags in Alberta i'm not sure how many tags are given out in each of the other zones but there's not very many the population isn't great but there's

13:47definitely definitely enough there to have a lot of fun uh they just can't give away the numbers that they they used to because it used to be when i was younger or when my my parents started hunting they could just go buy an antelope over the counter tag and it is not like that anymore yeah why is that is it overpopulated like over harvesting is it lack of terrain or lack of uh couple of very bad winters in the 90s uh from what i've heard in the 90s bad winters really suppress the numbers quite a bit there's a lot of winter kill and they just never recuperate in there from what i've heard there used to be herds of hundreds of them running around and you don't see herds like that you see herds of between five and 25 or 30 uh at the most the typical herds like 12 to 15 right now yeah okay so they're very conservative about the tag allocation is it the same way for the rifle tag how many years did it take you to draw the rifle tag

14:48take the rifle tag i was at like 11 uh that year okay so they are managing it very conservatively yeah they're trying to be very careful but there's still probably taking a few too many in my opinion i wish they would cut it back a little bit for a few years let let the population really expand like i would honestly like to see a shutdown for three four five years and see what happens with the population from there maybe do a lottery system with a couple tags through those just to keep the population managed and have some kind of money incoming from from that but the population is good but it could definitely be better okay all right um now when you found out that you drew this tag that has taken you all this time and energy and money to put into you found out what was

15:48the first thing that went through your mind as to how do i get prepared for this hunt now that i have drawn it uh he was i was very excited and i didn't know i didn't want to take the my big fifth wheel down and i wanted to be a lot more mobile so i basically set up my my Tahoe my SUV so i could sleep in the back of it i built a box so when my seats are folded forward there's a box behind it so i got a nice spot for an air pad and i had my cooler and food and everything in there i'd put a roof rack on it and stuff and just kind of kept everything with me so as i was able to move around i kind of had everything with me instead of traveling 45 minutes or an hour and a half to the nearest campground yeah and then and being stuck at the single location it would definitely save me a lot of time while i was out there okay so what was the the the strategy like or you mentioned you covered a lot of ground for your rifle hunt and that the the animals are limited in numbers

16:53like what was step number one east scouting was it good driving down there like how far away was this hunt from where you live so it's about a four hour drive from where i live so i spent a bunch of time on a i hunter this kind of like our version of onex up here for land ownership so i called a bunch of landowners i got a bunch of permission i don't even know how many thousands of acres i ended up having permission on these big leases are massively large so a couple landowners gave me permission they had no problem uh did that a bunch of east scouting i had a bunch of pins still from last times i was down there where i i seen concentrations of herds and where there wasn't antelope so when i did go down there i didn't really have to do a ton of driving around and locating i definitely drove around a bit uh looking for some of the larger bucks try to pin where they are where they ran to where they seem to come from the morning where i see them in the evening try to figure out some sort of patterns because they do have patterns

17:57try to locate where the water is and see if they're visiting that at all because they'll they'll definitely make a pass by some sort of water through at the day without having to walk all the way down into the river valley the elk grew up and down into the river valley a whole pile but i don't think the antelope do yeah okay all right so you drew the tag you started doing some scouting how difficult was it like what was your success rate on getting permission on some of these because i i take it that if the tag is coveted the species is eliminated then the landowners know or the leases know that they could probably make some money did you have to pay a trust pass fee at all we're not allowed to do that no we're not over it's by permission only and you are not allowed to pay or bribe anybody to get access it is the it's supposed to be a level playing field for anybody so unless you're paying an outfitter for a service you're not allowed to pay a landowner for access they

19:01have to just over give you permission say thank you and basically anybody that i called they were very very nice they just they want to know that you're out there they don't want you trespassing without permission but as long as you found their phone number and you called them they were very very okay with being out there 99% of them are foot access only they don't want you driving around yeah unless there's a roadway or a lease road going through their property you're allowed to drive on that they don't want you driving all over the place understandably because it is a very sensitive habitat down there 100% interesting now did did um let's see was there any public land in that area as well where is it just all private so all private well there's okay that's wrong there is public land there it they have big grazing leases i call them but they still have there's still cattle and stuff so you have to be careful keep the gates closed if there is gates closed you are okay to go through so there are some

20:02big grazing leases that are just like public pasture but you do have to be careful i i didn't see an abundance of antelope in those because everybody does drive around in them on all of the side roads and push the antelope around quite a bit um so i never really had a ton of success in those that that is where i ended up being successful at the end of it because on the private land i just couldn't make it happen on the private land either and tried something different that last day and that's where i ended up being successful was on the public land but there was definitely a higher population on private property gotcha okay all right um and so you got all that information from that i hunt app to where like that had phone numbers on it and everything some of it yes so if they're if they rent a lease from the government if they have a grazing lease from the government it'll be highlighted in a green you can click on it and it'll give you the landowner's

21:03information so that'll be for the lease but then you can usually look and pretty close to that lease is a bunch of their private property as well so you it kind of doubles up so they have a bunch of their own private property and they have a whole bunch of leases so you can kind of cheat and grab their phone number from the leases and then be asking for permission on the private as well gotcha and is that the same throughout all of Alberta i guess there's definitely more lease land down there uh southern Alberta and northern Alberta has a bunch more lease land kind of central there is not as much because it's all farmland yeah so you got to kind of get towards the edges of that farmland where they start having more cattle leases uh into the bush or in the open prairies where it's not ideal for agriculture and then they start getting into the quite a bit more leasing ground gotcha okay all right that makes a lot of sense all right so you what kind of preparation did you do differently than let's say like your white tail hunts or a meal deer hunt in your area

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23:12wrestlers battle for gold on the world stage right here in the united states tickets are on sale at you and lv tickets dot com get 20% off by using code team us a shooting my bow with 70 yards every day yeah trying to make 70 yards feel like the new 20 yeah so just reps basically reps and just shooting long long distances and trying to not that i didn't want to shoot an antelope at that far where i knew it was not going to be a 20 yard shot because there's just there's no way to get that close on the Syrian if perfect setup and a lot of guys that do hunt antelope loss or have lots of experience can get in that close you're sitting on water and you're on a good travel corridor you know where they're going to be you can try to get into 15 25 yards kind of but i knew my shots were going to be between 40 and 60 and maybe you can touch fast 60 so i just i consistently shot 70 yards 70 yards try to couple rounds at 80 wasn't super confident at 80

24:13but i was pretty good at 70 but shooting at home i'm in the trees and there's no wind and then as soon as you get down a southern Alberta it's not it wasn't super windy the days i was there but then i also had the decoy that mounts on the front of my bow and it just acts like a big catch and a little breeze couldn't really blow your bow around quite a bit and it makes it very difficult to stay consistent yeah i believe that um so just reps out at out at that distance is was there a was there any strategy around water hole or sitting on a water hole or anything like a cattle tank or anything like that there wasn't enough of them that i found even concentrations of antelope around for me to focus on that there was definitely water more water than i think they needed to be surviving well like they could they could probably find water on every quarter section or every section for

25:19sure of land so sure they know where they all are i never specifically seen any antelope af water so i didn't make the concentration point to where to focus my hunting efforts the bucks were because it was pre-racked kind of when i got down there so any of the bigger bucks were definitely traveling and trying to find empty herds of doles or doles with a small buck that's very easy for them to push off so any of the bucks that i did find early when i refound them a couple days later the the buck that was with those doles was no longer there in the bigger guy was with them and taking care of them hurting them around yeah yeah all right so you did your scouting you did your shooting um from a gear stand point did you have a different set of gear that you use for antelope hunt no just a lighter backpack try not to pack too much um it's very very weird getting up in the

26:21morning and you've got two sweaters on and you gotta put gloves on your hands because it's cold and then an hour and a half later you're peeling everything off because it is now 27 degrees yeah yeah so uh it's it gets warm fast that's what we're dealing with here in uh iowa right now we are like low fifties in the morning but then a high of 85 or if not higher by you know midday so i'm getting there's a cold front actually coming through next week that i'm pretty excited for for when i'm out there in south Dakota mule they're hunting all right as you when you showed up to you know like you didn't necessarily you had some spots from previous years knowledge did you go and check the pins where you had seen these antelope from previous years first were that was that your first move to those spots yeah i kind of i had one property that uh borders the

27:24military base down to southern Alberta so i really wanted to check that property first that first morning uh because i know they traveled in and out of that base quite a bit um because they know once they get on the other side of that fence into the base that they are they are free and safe you can't do any anything they got no pressure on that side but they definitely come out to the the big grasslands on on our side of the fence so i wanted to see what the traffic was like back and forth of course first morning i got down there i've seen a couple of three hundred and fifty four hundred eights bull elk on the base side when you can't do nothing about it so it was definitely cool to watch but i wish there was a opportunity on this side of the fence for that to be definitely no word is taking yep yep all right um so how many you get down there you check some spots how many miles were you putting on the truck every day looking for let me let me back up a second what was your goal as far as a size for for archery versus rifle right obviously you can reach out and touch something

28:29with a rifle you got to be at least seventy yards from your standpoint for uh for this so what was your goal as far as the caliber of analogue you were you wanted to harvest i definitely this this was a big point where i had to reflect back on after the hunt is i definitely overshot my sites on what my expectations were going to be for the hunt and i'm not sure why i set my expectations so high but my my rifle antelogue scored out of 79 inches he was one inch i think he's one inch or two inches away from making that booted pocket record book so he was big and i really really wanted to shoot one that was as bigger bigger than that uh with my bowl they were definitely around i definitely seen them um but it was definitely i was there too early for that to happen so what do you mean by that you were there too early i was there there was no way to get too close too close

29:32enough to get a shot when they're that old net smart because i was too early before the wreck okay so all right so you're saying they weren't dumb yet they weren't dumb yet they they looked at the decoy on the bowl or they see the truck or whatever and they they ran and when i say they ran like you can when you stop and watch them run like it's three four five miles and they are gone yeah like they are not sticking around for nothing so i was definitely too early the first three days of September i went down there was zero success i didn't get any closer than 250 yards to any antelope i tried to stock on the problem with antelope is they have five or eight times binocular vision so their vision is very very good and they have a 270 degree sight range so there's a little sliver behind that they're had that is the only thing that they can't see

30:32and they are always looking around so you put your binoculars up and you can see them that's what they're looking like all the time yeah so you can't try to lie from them i tried very hard a couple times and it was not anywhere near successful so when i went down i waited 10 days and then i went back so i kind of went down the second week of September for my what was final hunt second attempt it was definitely easier to get closer still the first two days of that hunt was a struggle they were with the doves so you're not the buck is now dumb but now he's got 15 sets of eyes with him yeah and trying to fool the doves and try to stay out of their sight range because they feed and wander around inconsistently try to watch them to bed down so they can kind of be out of the sight range a little bit more but there's always one standing up and watch around to get those matriarched doves they're just so smart and they're always watching okay so the first you went down

31:38on two separate occasions and now on the first occasion you said you felt like you went down too early and that was a hindrance because just because of the they they weren't in they hadn't switched over to don't their minds to doze yet it was just them out by themselves right oh by their cells i think they were trying to locate they're trying to locate her the doves but they weren't in a fighting mood yet so the the decoy that i have for my bowl is a small buck decoy so they see that they're not up for the challenge they they don't want to fight yes they don't want to run circles or or have any kind of confrontation yet they're just looking to locate doves and if there is a little buck with a group of doves then i think that's when they're willing to put it a challenge but they're not looking to challenge a buck out in the open by itself right for no reason not like when you get

32:39two bucks he the right they walk past each other they're probably going to fight anyways just because they're the testosterone levels or whatever or zoo yeah they weren't at that point yet okay all right so it sounds like your strategy was to actually get in their bubble somehow and then what were you going to blow a challenge call were like was that was that the strategy then i tried the challenge call and every time i tried that they ran and so i i stopped using the the little antelope call that i had it just did not seem to work here for whatever reason i'm sure it works for some people in specific situations they just did not like it here yeah so when i came down on the second trip when i started seeing a buck with doves i will try to sneak into like 300 or 200 yards and then i would try to pop up on top of the hill and then put the decoy up and then that's when i got exciting when they were a little bit more into the rut and a little bit more territorial i had a

33:44couple bucks smaller bucks run into me at like 12 and 15 yards and that was with the with the challenge call you know with the decoy just with just the decoy another buck has popped up out of nowhere and he's got three doves there and he wants to fight and push me off so they will come barrel and cross the prairie and run past until they discovered what i was and then they would loop back to go grab their doves and take off but yeah it was definitely definitely very cool okay so this is a question i probably should have asked you earlier and that is talk to us a little bit about the actual terrain there you said there's no cover it's wide open is there any change in terrain for you to get lower than them or hide behind something anything it kind of goes everywhere there's no trees so i'll throw that out there there is no such thing as trees down there there's some some prairies have tall grass some prairie have some little sage brushes

34:49and then some are nice and hilly so you can get you can kind of see where they are and then you can look at the top of map and look at your terrain and try to do a loop around them to get the wind in your favor and try to close the distance with the hill between the two of you but the hills are big but they're not as big as you'd think so you have to do huge loops around to keep the terrain between you and them because there are also so many hills that creates valleys between each of the hills and the doves are always in a different position than the buck and they always ended up picking me out first before I would hide from the buck it'd be successful on that but then the doves would see me and they would take off and he would just he wouldn't know why but he's running yeah yeah okay so there there was an opportunity to do a little sneaking or a little stalking in this it wasn't just like the act just calling her own though oh yeah i've had that happen dude

35:51it's a hundred times right yeah any snakes any rattlesnakes i've seen rattlesnakes on the roads only i never seen anyone i was out walking i think because it was later in the season they're all trying to make their way down to the river or they're on the road sounding themselves midday but i never never did see any while i was out walking in the grass which was thankful i didn't really want to see them while i was out there yeah that's yeah i had a couple times where they were sliding down into some hole right like five steps in front of me and they must have heard me or felt me coming and then as i'm walking i just see like their their tail is shaking as it's going down into the hole and i'm like oh yeah god i absolutely hate this i hate this and so okay all right so the first time you went down you saw you saw them right they were there you saw some big ones they just weren't in the mindset to where you feel you could have got close enough

36:55yeah but the second time you say what i was just say with rifle it would have been all over it would have been very easy but with archery they were not they were not ready to play you okay all right so you went down a different mindset of analogue you said you you felt like you set your expectations too high as far as the size of the antlers or the maturity of the analogue and that you had to like adjust your your expectation why was that what was it that made you have to change what you thought you could successfully get it was very the ground stocks were very very challenging and before i was successful i had six missed shots okay six missed shots yeah so i punched holes in the dirt six times and that's because those bigger bucks were not willing to come into less than 60 yards okay so you fired a couple arrows that were longer than 60 yeah so i

37:59tried a couple 60 and 65 yard shots and it wasn't the wind on the arrow that affected like i said earlier is the wind on my bow you crawl in and you're jogging low and trying to get behind the hill keep the train between you and the antelope and by the time you get there you're out of breath you don't have enough time to rest and get your your self stabilized and then trying to hold your bow up with like when you've got the quiver and you've got the extra decoy in the front it is tiring trying to hold that up in the wind and keep it stabilized for a longer shot like that i didn't miss by much it was usually cut the hair off of them it was so close the one buck i did get two opportunities is 60 yards but i just i could not get those bigger ones as early as i was there into a lesser distance knowing what i know now to try again next time i will wait to be there more of a peak rut situation and then i'll be a little bit easier to get them in to those closer distances

39:05so it's very much a learning curve yeah it sounds like it sounds like it now that's great is it because the older deer or the older antelope are more weary about just everything or is it because it doesn't like they they just don't take any bs as opposed from a young dumb antelope they might who doesn't have a harem might be a little bit more i don't know worse on his decision making to get in like to allow you to see what's like what's going on what's really going on and they stand in one spot for too long kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters that's why trade pros trust fiber cement party backer board to keep tile firmly in place resist cracking and held block moisture chosen over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms party backer board what the best build on shop now at participating home depot lows and floor into

40:09core stores for more information visit jameshardy.com slash hardy backer this episode sponsored by good ranchers most people don't realize this but over 85% of the grass fed beef sold in the us is actually imported from overseas it's a system that often pushes out american farmers and ranchers that's why it matters to be intentional about where you buy your meat that's why i choose good ranchers good ranchers connects you directly with local american farms and ranches 100% american meat past your raised no antibiotics no added hormones delivered straight to your door make the switch to better meat go to good ranchers dot com to start your plan and get premium american delivered right to your door that's good ranchers dot com american meat delivered like the younger bucks are always going to be more curious because they've probably never seen an archery hunter before or someone calling around in their hands and knees i'm sure those bigger bucks in the last two or

41:11three years are probably they know it's fall they know the dry season this starts seeing trucks driving around all over the place they know what those trucks are they know those trucks contain us and we're trying to go out there and we bump them i'm sure they've been educated by other hunters through the rifle season the years passed and the archery seasons year passed they don't get big overnight they just get bigger than more that they they learn from us gotcha yeah yeah um all right so as you started to realize like these these older more mature analogue we're going to be the hardest to kill how did your strategy then change try to have more patience and try to let them come to me try to try to let them when they're further away try to let them get themselves in a position without you knowing that you're them knowing that you're there let them do more natural movement and try not

42:16try not to force something that's unnatural yeah so and how do you do that let them become let them try to bed down or watch them until another buck approaches and then usually they would start fighting and they would start running around uh the one time i didn't watch that and then i tried to make a move got around got closer to the doors bought the decoy up and then the smaller of the two bucks unfortunately was one of that ran in on me but it worked like a charm just let them hash their thing out and then when the dominant buck or the other buck sees that there's another buck coming in to cut off the doors and try and take the doors away then they come in for that challenge as well it was it's uh it's a very strange way to hunt yeah so you're you're almost getting to you're almost letting them distract themselves

43:17then because of the breeding season then you make a move and position yourself in an area that where okay now i got this other guy to go deal with because he's probably his blood's boil in too how did you get in close enough and pull off a shot when where did you position yourself so that the buck would come into you but the doors never saw you so the the hunt that i was successful on i ended up parking while i spotted i spotted a buck and two doors probably four miles out in the pasture so i looked on my map there is a lease road that can kind of get me kind of close to them so i didn't have to walk the full distance uh so i got in as close as i could got all my stuff out walked in on them um i got into 60 yards from the bigger buck they ended up being a second buck there by time i got there uh i don't know where he came from they show off or nothing but they

44:20always do so they were standing off doing their thing the doors were watching me come in with the decoy i ended up getting to within 60 yards of the uh of the bigger buck i missed him uh looked for my arrow couldn't find it after they ran away kind of watched where they went to because i was gonna make a stock on them later in the day and trying relocate them um so i spent 45 minutes looking for my arrow i ended up having some work calls to answer and get to in the midst of it uh grabbed all my stuff started walking back to my tojo and when i walked over the hill i see my tojo at the bottom of the hill and then there was another buck coming my way probably two miles away and i put my decoy up and he was all by himself i put my decoy up and he just he started running towards me and he was so this is crazy because you've mentioned four miles and two miles and that you were

45:22were you using a spotting scope or a set of binoculars yourself to identify because at two miles i'm like you can't you can't identify a a male analogue at two miles you could just maybe you would see a dot or something you can't identify it it's a male when i put the binoculars up i could tell it was a male but i could yeah you'd be amazed how well you can see them on top of the hill their white butt stands out very very well right right right slow you see this little this little spot and you can see it's it's not not normal and i knew wasn't there when i left yeah so i put that up and then he seen the white of the decoy and then he was for some reason he was ready to come running in he was all by himself i don't know if he assumed that i had the buck that i was trying to be had some other dozer he came in to investigate so i stood my ground when i waited at the top of the hill and he ran down into a valley so then i i went down at the same time came up the next hill

46:24when he came up to the top the next hill he stood waiting five minutes watching seen what's going on and he came again so he was still probably like eight nine hundred yards away came running and down the next valley i'm going to call it which is not much of a valley but change in terrain so i move forward a little bit more got away from my vehicle if i as much as i could so i was probably 80 yards away from my vehicle and then he came up the back side of the next hill he was probably 110 hundred and fifty yards away and then then we've probably sat there for five ten minutes he was watching just trying to see what happened so i kind of would i would stand up and then i would i would move ten steps and then sit back down just make it look like some natural movement trying some different things seeing how he reacts just trying to trying to learn the behaviors uh then he got curious and he came down that next one came up

47:28the back of the hill that was right in front of me he's probably like 80 yards and then so now that's the only hill that's between us i'm at the bottom he's at the top just silent and i waited and waited and he wasn't moving so there's a couple saved brushes going up the face of that hill um so i just and your in your decoy was presented to him this whole time the whole time so the decoys in front of me i'm holding my bow the whole time so i just i tried to move to the left or right and try and keep save brush so it's blocking my legs so i can kind of walk it and mostly operate position um so i i just slowly started working my way towards them kept the decoy up and i was able to get into 40 yards and he turned broadside and i ended up getting them at 40 yards and he only went to both 40 yards after the shot it was perfect shot there was it was i was very thankful i finally made a connection um i will i'll be honest there was a little

48:33disappointed in his size at the beginning but then just like trying to remember it's my first archery antelope it's not an easy feat to try to get an archery antelope so now i've made the decision next time i get my rifle tag i will be trying with archery first and then and then i'll go with rifle the next the last day if i have to but i'm gonna try to get with archery it was a ton of fun yeah well i mean i'm looking at the picture of this antelope and it i'm looking at the smile on your face dude that's what i'm looking at and uh you know and and i don't even like i look at an antelope like this and i go dude that's a slammer antelope i don't know anything about antelope yeah i think i was most disappointed because he was he was just small enough he didn't quite make popin young okay and i i really wanted a popin young animal i think that was my big sticking point but i am definitely more than happy now uh the industry is a weird thing as you know then people

49:36get stuck on the numbers too too much not really taking the hunt for what it is and being faithful for the experience and that it took me an hour or whatever and i was like yeah no this i would definitely find with this and yeah with all due respect i say fuck the numbers yes you know what i mean like it's not about that at all right and so no dude how where does this rank as far as because you've killed moose right you've killed mule deer white tails antelope any other animals elk do you be killed in elk i've killed cow elk with my bow and i've killed a couple of black bears with my bow okay all right so in in the range of difficulty where does this was the highest oh yeah definitely the artist i would i would put it harder than elk yeah just for the fact that you can't can't call them in you you can't hear them calling three miles

50:39away you're in the wide open there there's the terrain makes it the hardest because there is that anything you would use for any other animal hide behind a tree behind a shrub use some mountain terrain to your advantage or some koolies or hay bales or anything to get between you and the animal there is none of that down there like i as you can get behind the hills but that's still not going to get you with less than the hundred yards you have to be your fully visual to them at any time you're trying to get close to killed them yeah yeah yeah i just and plus there's no trees right white open trees wide open right yeah other than the one time in 2014 when i went on uh it was like i had an analogue tag and i had a white tail or a deer tag

51:40for Kansas and i could have shot a mule deer or a white tail man i i saw analogue and i think i just got lucky on how i got close to him right i was in a low spot he was coming a clear across the valley at some point in uh early october so i'm guessing maybe he maybe it was the rut he was looking for his last you know looking for uh uh uh heard a dose or whatever and i just i just was in a low spot and then he caught my scent and then he blew at me and then he came around to investigate what i was because he couldn't see me and then he walked right into me and then of course i blew the shot but oh yeah i blew the shot but uh that's the closest ever since even when i go out mule deer hunting i run into analogue but man they they know exactly what's up right yeah i had one bar that i was able to cut off and i was if i had another five seconds ten seconds to keep running before he would have

52:47peaked over that hill i would have got a uh 55-gird shot at him but he by time he peaked over that hill i was at 85 yards and then he just he just did the stand and he watched and then he blew at me and and ran and just like they they are so fast i've never seen an animal that lives its whole life running that's all they don't walk they run yeah yeah well tag punched my friend successful hunt yes or no it was definitely successful yeah there was a ton of fun i would i am definitely dying to do it again it's definitely the most challenging for one years yeah well i can use my rifle tag next time so there's a different zone i can go to uh because i'm at a five preference point now i think i can get uh rifle tag at an eight in the other zone so i think i'm gonna try that one in three maybe four years in the other zone and then i'm gonna because it's a three day season i'm gonna do like the first day and a half two days with archery and see if

53:47i can make it happen and then i'll go right for the last day unless i'm in a really good situation i'll probably have both with me the the last day yeah so hopefully three four years from now i can try it again perfect perfect well congratulations dude now like we said you're you got a deer tag punched you're gonna maybe focus on getting some other people in front of some animals maybe no moves this year i i'm gonna go for a move so i'm gonna take like 12 year old knees out just yeah to go out um not looking trying super super hard to be successful unless he a giant walks in on me i'll just bring them in and play with them and get her the experience and seeing the animals and maybe take some video and do stuff like that and just to have the interaction to have her out there but i'm definitely not seeking that i have more meat from last year than i know what to do with this still because we got four out last year and a move three annual old last year uh and yeah

54:53it just we're very full i don't need any more meat i just want to be able to get the kids out in the experience heck yeah dude well you need to start having some community some community bankwits or something like this to feed the feed the community you know what i mean so Ken i appreciate your time thanks for sharing your story and whatever you decide to do this uh rest of this fall good luck thanks Dan you're listening to the sportsman's empire podcast network and this episode is brought to you by interstate batteries for all of your battery needs visit your local interstate batteries retail store interstate batteries outrageously dependable kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters that's why trade pros trust fiber cement hardy backer board to keep tile firmly in place resist cracking and help block moisture chosen over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms hardy backer board what the best build on shop now

55:57at participating home depot lows and floor into core stores for more information visit jameshardy.com slash hardy backer kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters that's why trade pros trust fiber cement hardy backer board to keep tile firmly in place resist cracking and help block moisture chosen over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms hardy backer board what the best build on shop now at participating home depot lows and floor into core stores for more information visit jameshardy.com slash hardy backer