Fred

I had to vacuum my Antelope today.

The dust-bunnies were just getting too darn thick; every time I looked at him, he appeared about to sneeze.

That's a pretty tough trick for a critter who has been dead for going on 30 years.

Actually, it's hard for me to decide exactly how long I've had "Fred". I took him in SE Oregon during a season during the early 80's. It was probably about 1982 or 83, because my son was still a toddler and he was born in 1980.

My father and I had been hunting antelope together since I was in high school, which means our first hunt was probably in the autumn 1963. We went to Wyoming then (the area around Rawlins) and we both bagged decent Buck Antelope although they were nowhere near trophies.

Then we started applying for tags for Eastern Oregon Antelope hunts. They were limited, we had to put if for the drawing, and had to specify the area we wanted to hunt in. We found a dry lake bed just outside of Burns, Oregon, and thought that it would hold little attraction to most hunters even though it was just a few miles from an Antelope reservation area. We figured there might be a few drifters from the reservation, and that they would probably be lone bucks or old bucks with a small harem. We got our tags, drove down there in a teensy little datsun pickup (attached to a motor home ... we like our comforts when we can get them) and spend a couple of pre-season days scouting the area.

We saw a TON of good, shootable bucks as we were driving around the day before the season opened. but when we went back to the same places on Opening Day, we didn't see any Antelope at all. We decided that Antelope are like Deer; they know when the hunting season opens, and plan to make themselves scarce.

But the second day we move a little bit west, where we hadn't scouted before, and found a magnificent 100-foot tall mesa that was narrower than it was tall, and it had a slope on the south side that we could easily climb.

When we got on top of that mesa, we could see for miles in either direction. We saw two water tanks of which we were not previously aware, so we decided that this was good hunting country because both the cattle (which were pasturing in the area) and the wildlife would know that there was a reliable source of water.

We also saw a few antelope ... a small bunch of five or six ... about a mile away. By that time of cay (about 9am) they had already watered for the day and were now grazing. Or browsing, more likely, because like Deer, Antelope feed less on grass than on bushes and brush ... even sagebrush.

So we took a compass bearing (NE by N), climbed back down from the mesa and headed out on the same bearing. After trekking about a half-mile, we started still-hunting.

Antelope like cattle; in Antelope country, you don't always look for Antelope. Sometimes you look for cattle, and when you find them you begin to hunt Antelope.

So it was that day. Cattle were scattered all through the area, but we found Antelope in the near vicinity.

The big buck had a small harem of 3 does. There were a couple of young bucks loitering around the area, sniffing around the does. The big buck had apparently been successfully fighting them off, as all three males showed signs of fighting. The most obvious evidence of this was the chips off the horns.

We sneaked around the harem, Pop in overwatch and me doing the sneak. I came around a big sagebrush, glanced to my left, and saw the biggest damn Antelope I had ever seen in my life. He was looking straight at me from about 35 feet away, and (they are so fatally CURIOUS about things!) the old boy kept watching me as I faced him, raised my .25-06, and shot him ... and missed!

I've missed game before, but never that close, standing still, and just begging to become my dinner. I guess it must have been Buck Fever, or I just rushed my shot so badly because it was so PERFECT I didn't want to blow it.

So I blew it.

The buck didn't wait around for me to repeat my invitation to dinner. He wheeled on the proverbial and headed for parts West ... back toward his harem.

I had no good shot. So I racked another 117 grain Nosler Boat-Tail Partition bullet in that customized 1903-A3 and shot him right in the ass.

Pitiful. Broke his leg at the hip, and he kept ON running hell-bent for leather with one hind leg literally flapping in the breeze. Who knew a hundred-ten pound Antelope could be so tough?

He went through the sage like a swallow goes through a swarm of gnats. I locked down the ought-six and took off running after him. The sage brush was tall, over my head, and he didn't need to bob and weave to quickly get out of my sight. But he wasn't hard to track. There was a plain blood trail that my 2 year old son could have followed. About a hundred yards away I came up on him. He was laying on his side, bleeding and broken, and looking up at me with the biggest dark eyes the world has ever known.

I feel like the biggest jerk the world has ever know. Rather than put another high-velocity bullet in him, I pulled my 1911 and put a 230-grain hardball through his heart. But THAT took me two tries, as well, before he finally put his head down, sighed, and died.

I was so ashamed of my self. I sat down in front of him and started to weep. I was only a couple of years back from Viet Nam, I had killed men, and none of that ever affected me as much as this horrible, sloppy inexcusable murder of an innocent beast.

My father walked up on my while I was sniveling; he saw what was going on, and just stopped. Waited for me to settle myself down and get back up on my feet. The old man surprised me a lot (as I got older, he got SO much smarter!), be never as much as when he said: "That's okay; a man who has no feelings for the animals he kills, is a man I don't want to hunt with."

I never figured out exactly what that meant, but it made me feel better about it even though it was a nasty, sloppy kill.

I started field dressing the critter while Pop went to get the pickup. When got looking at him close, I found that my first shot had not been a clean miss. The view was quartering me more than looking head-on, as I had thought. I only know this because I found a shot low on the ribs from the front aspect which went through a little meat before exiting ... the light hollow-point bullet wasn't hitting bone or enough meat to cause it to expand. The poor old fellow could have run a mile with that hole before he bled out, and I might not have ever tracked him to his death spot because he was only bleeding heavily from the second shot, the leg-breaking hit.

We got him cleaned up, washed out the body cavity with five gallons of water we had hauled for that purpose (no Virginia, it doesn't ruin the meat to pour water on it; it cools it off and keeps it from getting gamey in hot weather) and put him in the back of the truck.

On the way out, we ran across another small bunch. Parked the truck, I bird-dogged with the binoculars and Pop stalked down a very nice young buck (no harem there ... the buck was about 2 or 3 years old as were his bachelor buddies) and took him with one clean shot. That 7mm Magnum hit right in the neck, a broadside standing shot at 200 yards, and that Antelope collapsed just like a puppet when his strings are cut. Never saw a more instant kill before, never did again. That was a beautiful shot; he never knew he was dead. Well. Pop was ever the better hunter.

We dressed the second buck, and t when we got back on the graded dirt road we were met by an Oregon State Wildlife (Fish & Game) Ranger. He checked our tags to make sure they were attached and filled out properly, and admired my buck.

He admired it so much, he took a picture. He said they like to post them on their bulletin board at the Ranger station, so hunters stopping by can see what fine Antelope they grew in that area.

We took our bucks to the local taxidermy station (they set up in the boondocks during Antelope season, it's just good business.) Eventually it cost me about $350 to get a full head-and-neck mount, and I've cherished that singular trophy ever since. Turns out, the tips of both horns were broken out (see the photo), apparently Fred was fighting off the young males to protect his harem. I guess one of those two young bucks fought off the other to game breeding rights ... but that's all Antelope Culture.

Oh ... when we finally got back to Oregon, I took Fred to a professional butcher. Ordered all cutlets ... no roasts, no chops, no hamburger. But I did ask them to turn all the stuff that would ordinarily be used to make hamburger, to be made into salami.

Fred may have died hard, but the meat was tender and absolutely delicious! Since then, I've had all of my antelope processed the same way.

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We (Pop and me) went back to Wyoming three other times ... it's where we had our last hunt as well, in the mid 1980's. It was sad, as it was the last hunt my father went on. I found him a good big antelope with good horns and a beautiful black face, but he couldn't see it even using the scope mounted on his 7mm Remington Magnum rifle. Two years earlier, he did just fine, but Pop was in his late 70's and his eyesight was going and so was his stamina. I hunted the last day by myself, because Pop was too pooped to make it up those steep Eastern Wyoming hills in the strong winds. I found a little doe and I had an "any-sex" tag, so I shot her down like a mangy dog, gutted and dragged her to the truck, and went back to camp so we could pack up to go home.

I haven't hunted since. It's no fun, unless you have the Jaeger Meister with you.