Our Wyoming trip(pic heavy)


wtnhunt

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We left home before light on September 29th, headed to hunt with Steve Beilgard. We had heard so much about Steve, and what more can I say about the man, an absolutely awesome person with a wealth of knowledge, I am very thankful we had this opportunity.

We stopped in Mitchell South Dakota the first night and got up early the next morning and back on the road. Mt. Rushmore was not far out of the way so we took the detour there along the way, Thank you to Jeff for mentioning that to me, well worth the detour. Few pics from Rushmore.

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As we were leaving had to get a pic of the flag with the Mountain in the background.

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Got into Gillette and checked into our hotel mid afternoon, then left to meet Steve and Rilda and Randine and her family. Steve fed us a nice meal. Cannot say thank you enough for the hospitality.

Oct 1, first day to hunt we got to the ranch before light. Steve put his truck in places I would not have tried in order to get where he wanted to get to. We did a good bit of walking and glassing the first morning and heard elk bugling over the wind. We did not see much in the way of deer until mid day.

Steve glassing from a ridge.

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A shot of an antelope below, they blend well.

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Had a bachelor group with 3 bucks across on another ridge we wanted to get a better look at, but unfortunately they spooked before we got closer to them. Turned out there was 4 deer, Christina saw the 4th one get up when they took off, I was focused on the one in the middle. After they got on their feet, Steve got a better look and said there was at least one good one in the group. From what I saw the one was a very nice buck. We saw plenty of antelope the first day and Steve pointed out the ones he thought were good ones, I was paying attention. Day one closed with a herd of elk passing in front of us and a bull jumping the fence in front of us as we were leaving, does not get much better than that. Got a little video footage of that I will have to edit and load later.

Day 2, had a few opportunities on antelope and I unsuccessfully attempted a stalk on a nice antelope that was a bit spooky. Saw more elk, got a few pics of elk.

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I will let Christina tell more about the details of her antelope, but long story short we found this guy bedded after covering a bit of ground on foot glassing for deer and took advantage of the opportunity. Her buck was bedded and well there is a story there I will let her tell.

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Day 2 closed and we got her antelope off to the processor.

Morning of day 3, Christina spotted her mule deer, again will let her fill in the details. Had some other pics from a different angle with my dslr where her hat was not shadowing her face but unfortunately somehow the white balance selector on the camera got bumped and they were washed out.

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With Christina tagged out now, we continued hunting primarily focusing on deer. Found my first ever shed, a little elk shed at some point and went on to find another elk shed after Steve pointed one out to me, which had us with 3 elks sheds to bring home. Will have to get some pics of them later and post them.

Day 4 we did a lot of walking/hiking and glassing for deer in another area of the ranch where there appeared to be less traffic and that seemed to hold some promise. After glassing from a ridge kind of late in the afternoon Steve and Christina headed back to the truck and I walked on up another draw and found a herd of elk. Got within probably 100 yards of the cows and calves and saw a really nice bull come out of the pines behind a bedded cow and thought to myself that was where I wanted to be the next morning looking for deer, was some good deer sign and seemed to be a pretty secluded area. Watched the bull for a good bit through the binos, all I had with me was the phone, no good camera, too bad I sure would have liked to have gotten some good pics. Bull had 8 points on one side and the other side was busted off having 5 points. Very cool to watch them. After they went off, i headed to where I was going to meet up with Steve and Christina and found a pretty nice 4 point mulie shed on the way down.

Not much luck in the way of deer other than finding a few does, but as the day was drawing towards a close we did find a nice antelope and we tried a few times to get on him, but just did not work out. Christina got a bit sick after we left Steve's daughters house, not sure if it was food that got too warm that she ate for lunch or elevation/heat related, but she wanted to get back out the next morning despite feeling a little under the weather.

Last day, day 5 we were on our own and rather than getting out at or before daylight we got to the ranch a little later. Over the 4 days of hunting Steve gave me some good insight on what to look for and I knew where we wanted to go. Plan was to work our way up to the ridge and glass for deer and if a good antelope gave me a shot we would take it. Wind was in our favor to work from a fence line so we parked the durango and started the mile or so walk. We saw a few decent antelope along the way, but opted to pass them up. As we came around the back side of the bowl we saw the antelope we were after the day before stand up. I did not know it was the same one at that point I just knew he was a good one. Christina said its him. He had been by himself bedded thankfully. I shouldered the .270 and put his shoulder in my crosshairs and squeezed the shot freestanding, was probably no more 120 yards. As he ran off, Christina said "yes, he is hit good" and I immediately noticed his far side leg dangling. "Oh no" was my thought, how could he be running off. I hit a little forward and somehow the bullet came out low on the off side, we were up a bit higher than the antelope. Anyway, we waited a little while and then went and found blood immediately and a lot of it. Somehow this antelope managed to make it off and hide down in a little low area, I knew I must have missed the vitals with the hit being forward. After he was out of sight I stayed low and walked back to the durango and got us both some water and took back Christina's jacket and my long sleeve undershirt and then we started heading towards where we last saw the antelope round a corner. We saw him get back up and go back down and came up with a plan to sneak up on him using the terrain. We managed to get about 250 yards from him before he saw us and got up, I got a good solid kneeling shot on him when he stopped, he dropped straight down with that shot.

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Great hunting story William. I felt like I was there. Steve and Rilda are some of the finest people I have ever met.

Cristina's antelope is so thick in the horns ...too cool

and yours is another great trophy as well.

It sounds like you two had lots of fun and quite the experience to say the least. Awesome!!!!

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it was a fun trip for all of us. i never thought it would take over 3 days to fill two deer and 2 antelope tags, but our weather was in the 80's each day. too hot. the deer were bedded in holes before sunup and we had to hunt real hard to find any. too much land and too few deer. sorry you have to eat your tag, artie.

you know a good antelope, leo. i told artie it was 16" when we first saw it. the tape we put on it read 15 7/8". i'm guessing 82 b&c, which makes the book.

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