Uncle Bill's Coyote Trap

One of the latest deer-hunting trips I took with my father was in around 1970-1972.  I can't be more specific, but I got back from overseas in late September of 1970 and it wasn't long before I tired of hunting .. so this is the best estimate I can provide.

I went hunting  with my father (and my mother, and my wife, in a large trailer-thingie behind a Dodge Pickup) in late 1970's, immediately after I got home from my tour of duty.

My father wanted me to go hunting with him in the Elgin, Oregon are where he had many relatives.  I had become distanced from much of my family , so I wasn't much concerned about  ... whatever that whole "family" think was bout.\
...
The Coyote:
Anyway, there was only one reason why I agreed to go hunting with my father, and that was because I had missed him while I was away, and I wanted to reconnect with his wise and experienced self.

There was only one incident which made the trip worth-while to me: that was the deer-hunting trip of 1970.

I had an uncle on my mother's side, who was not someone I admired.  He fancied himself a trapper.
But he didn't trap beaver: he trapped Coyotes.

Uncle Jack and The Pitiful Buck

"Social" hunting story:

Social means ... your wives are along on the trip; so you're not so much
Back in the seventies, I went on a deer hunting trip with my father.  Almost the last trip we shared together.

We were hunting with a childhood friend of my father ... let's cal him "Jack".

The hunt occurred in a deep-canyon/mountainous area in Eastern Oregon, and Jack was foolish enough to shoot a deer deep in  (actually, ACROSS) a canyon.  I followed my father and Jack deep into the canyon where the deer had died, and it was a scrawny specimen.  But Jack had killed it, so we were obliged to reap the meet.

I carried the rifles of my father and Jack, and my own .. it was a sufficient burden to make the trek up the step slope ... burdensome.  I was only 15 years old, and scrawny at that!

I was glad I wasn't trying to drag that skinny buck up the mountainside; it was more effort than it was worth.
When we got the buck back to the mountain-side, the carcass had been beat to death; all they could do (Jack and my father) was drag it up the mountain, with one hand for the antlers (which provided a convenient handhold) and one hand for the new-growth firs with which the area had been recently re-seeded.  Yes, Jack had gutted the deer, but even a mere 80 pounds of deer is a handful on such a st eep (50 degree) slope.

when they had finally humped the yearling back to the campsite, my father and I enjoyed a LARGE whiskey; not in celebration so much as a grateful end to a boring and perilous trek.

JACK was left with the chore of dressing the buck.

I watched as Jack skinned the buck (he hat gutted it before we started back up the mountain .. guts are heavy! ... and after he got the hide off, every bit of meat we could see was dark with blood-shot.

Jack took over an hour to find some viable meat on that carcass, after he took the hide off.  It was all blood-shot as hell, and he threw away more than he put into the bucket.

By the time he was done, the gut bucket, or the hide, or the bloodshot-bucket held more weight than the usable meet which he salvaged.  I think that was Jack's most embarrassing moment, because he had wasted so much meat by his determination to 'bring home the bacon' that his only pride was that he had made a good, clean one-shot kill .. but had reaped little bacon for the exercise.  It wasn't worth the trek to drag the deer up out of the valley.

Jack took more time to dress the meat than he did to drag it up out of the falley.  He REALLY shouldn't have taken the shot, but his pride wouldn't allow him to pass it up.

I still remember the vision of that skeletal carcass, hanging from a tree-dependent meat-hook after Jack had taken every edible morsel of meat off it. It was pitiful.

It was a bad kill;
we all knew it.

We all resented the effort it took to drag that dead body (it was already not 'game' but a 'victim') out of the deep cut between the tall mountains.  The women were without comment; my mother, Jack's wife, my wife ... Jack was a friend, and we didn't need to tell him he had made a fool of himself.

He knew it.

That was the last time I hunted deer.
I soon learned that Pronghorn Antelope were MUCH more interesteing!

Wyoming Antelope and the Texas Neophyte

Back in the late 70's and early eighties, my father and I hunted antelope.

We hunted and killed antelope in Oregon (another story or two), but this is when we were lucky enough to draw antelope tags in Wyoming.

South Eastern Oregon is  ... or was .. a great place to hunt Antelope.  And I'll talk about that area another time.  But this time, we were hunting out of Rawlins, Wyoming.  One of my favorite places!

There's nothing like finding a small herd of antelope, picking the best buck out of the herd, and busting him.

This is a story about ... not finding a buck, but finding a doe.

My father (here-after "Pop") and I had been hunting antelope for several years after I got home from the army, and I had already got over the angst about killing game.

Rawlins was (as said before). our favorite place to hunt for a couple of reasons:

(1)  there's a lot of open range just a short drive from Rawlins, and:
(2)  there's a lot of antelope on BLM land, where there's no restrictions because (at the time) Pronghorn Antelope were considered .. what's the term?  Oh yeah .. "varmints".  (Landowners objected to them eating the haystacks they had  created to feed their cattle.  Antelope eat hy?  I had never realized that.  Go figure .. but at least it was easy to get permission from landowners to hunt Pronghorns on their land!)

, .. and since we had been there in previous years, we were comfortable with the region.
On this day, we were just kind of working a small area which seemed a reasonable place to find pronghorns.

I had, by then, become fairly proficient in spotting the white-tail of a Phongie, and when we found a mesa with a lot of tracks leading to it, I was reasonable confident that we could find antelope there.

We were right,
but we were wrong at the same time:

,,, the antelope HAD been there, and a fairly large herd.
But by the time we got there. we discovered that the herd had been scattered by another hunter.

My father stayed back wile I move up onto the mesa (which is a misnomer ... it was just a small hill with a flat top) and I found a lot of 'antelope sign', but no antelope.

What I found was, another hunter.

We met, exchanged names, and he told me that a small mixed (male and female) herd had just run off.

I wasn't surprised that it was a "mixed:" herd:  Antelope usually depend on the dominant female to lead the others.  When she signals that they should leave, the take their most delightful PRONG PRONG hopping leaps past all obstacles (especially barbed wire fences, though which the oddly choose to crawl through) and evacuate the area.

On this day, I arrived on a hilltop where I expected to find a small herd, and instead found a texan with a motorcycle.

Okay, the hilltop was a bit smaller than is suggested by the term "MESA", although I'm not sure what the correct nomenclature applies.  And it wasn't really a Honda 50, but close enough to make no never mind.  Cut me some slack here, okay?

So I asked the Texan what had happened, and he told me that he had jumped the small herd which I had expected; he got one shot off, didn't hit anything, and was disappointed that the herd had left the area.

HELLO?

"Flock Shooting"?

He had shot at "A Herd", not hit anything, and they left?  I didn't believe him.

(Would You?)

So I checked the ground and found a couple of small strings of gut; indicative that SOMEONE had shot SOMETHING, but he didn't tell me about that.

If you're like me, you don't like the idea of leaving wounded game;  a closer examination of the ground revealed more gut, and a blood trail leading vaguely off to the East .. down off the hill and (later) toward a small draw.

Antelope like high ground; but when hurt, they seek a hide.  They go DOWNHILL.
This is obviously what had happened.

I talked to the Texan with the Honda, and he eventually (shame-facedly) admitted that he was shooting at the Bull of the herd, but perhaps ... perhaps ... at the last minute an ewe had move between him and his target .. and he may (maybe, perhaps) have hit her instead.  At any rate, the Bull and the rest of the herd got away and he was hot to trot to go after his target!

Walking the ground, I found some more gut (suggesting that the female had been hit harder than the Texan wanted to accept), and a small (dainty) blood trail leading East of the high-ground.  There was a small swale over there, so I suggested to the Texan that he leave his moped behind and come with me while we followed the trail.

He was reluctant.

I flipped the safety of my .25-06 (built by my father on a 1903-A3 Action a few years earlier) and offered a more  friendly suggestion that, since he had shot the ewe, he might have a vested interest in following up the consequences of his bad judgement.

After a short (seconds) period of reflection, he allowed as if perhaps that was the right thing to do.

I pointed him in the direction of the blood trail, and we preceded down-hill to a small swale which was not obvious from our original vantage point.  I walked behind him.

There we found a very small doe, gut shot, not bleeding much but lying on her side and not able to stand.

I told the Long Tall Texan to finish her off, which he did with a single shot to the head at 20 yards through his 7x Leopold.  I was impressed, considering that he was over-scoped for that kind of a shot.

Then I asked him to display his hunting license and tag, which he did.  At my direction, he tore out the 'date' portion of the tag (the 23rd, IIRC) and signed it using a lead-tipped bullet from my .25-06 as a pencil.

*(he claimed he didn't have a pencil; we've dealt with this before, Pop and I.)*

Fortunately for him, we were both hunting on an "Either Sex" tag, so he was the proud possessor of 50 (probably 35)  pounds of antelope meat with no trophy horns to display in his den.

But it was a legal (if reluctant) kill, so he faced no expectation of criminal/game charges being posted on him.

Chicago Wins .. America Wins!

Court Sides With SAF On Key Points In Challenge Of Chicago Gun... -- BELLEVUE, Wa., Sept. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
: BELLEVUE, Wa., Sept. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --

Chicago loses some of its unconstitutional Gun Laws ..America Reasserts it Constitutional Rights.
(H/T: "Say Uncle")

A federal judge has sided with the Second Amendment Foundation on key points of an on-going legal action against the City of Chicago that challenges the city's municipal code regarding gun ranges inside the city. 

 --

"Every day on which Chicago loses some of its unconstitutional laws," observed attorney Alan Gura, who represents SAF in this litigation, "is a better day than the one before. This latest decision brings Chicago that much closer to the rest of America, where responsible, law-abiding people can practically access gun ranges for safety training and recreation. We are studying our options for improving this positive outcome." 

 In her ruling, Judge Kendall noted that Chicago police officials "admitted that they had no data or empirical evidence that any criminal impact would occur due to the presence of a firing range, or that it would be lessened by placing ranges in manufacturing districts." Indeed, plaintiff's expert Lorin Kramer "testified that he was unaware of any location throughout the country where crime increased as a result of a gun range in that location." 

This is A Good Day for America.

While the "gun violence" daily exercised by drug gangs in Chicago has been a serious problem , the continued efforts of the Chicago mayor R.E. to restrict access to self-defensive firearms has undermined the ability of law-abiding citizens to take control of their streets.

Today, they  have full access to close-by, local shooting ranges where they can practice their control of entirely legal firearms.

This may give them an advantage of over gang-bangers who notoriously practice "Prey & Spray"  (sic) tactics during street-level gun-fights, often resulting in the unintended accidental deaths of nearby innocents.  Casualties for which the drug dealers seemingly hold no remorse.

It is too soon to tell whether the determination of local legal firearms owners to protect their neighborhoods will be successful, but one thing is clear:

With access to a place to hone their shooting skills, the "neighborhood" has just increased its ability to enhance accuracy with their newly acquired firearms.  Very likely it's a metaphorical "Take Back Your Neighborhood" effort which will yield mixed results; be prepared for the likelihood that the Hood's population will drop real soon.

The Lambs will become Sheep-dogs.  Some of this "bad business" is coming home to roost.

It's their neighborhood, and they WILL take it back!

Non-Lead Ammunition: The Norwegian Exception

" ... the simple fact is that it is vital we meet our responsibility to kill wild game in the most humane and effective way."
___________________________________________________

Shooting Wire:  (July 07 2014)

 PHOENIX - If you want to use non-lead ammunition for your hunt this year, now is the time to start shopping. The Arizona Game and Fish Department is expecting a repeat of last year's non-lead ammunition shortage this hunting season. Those intending to hunt big game in California or in condor areas in Arizona (Game Management Units 12A, 12B, 13A and 13B), are strongly encouraged to buy their non-lead ammunition supplies as soon as possible.

We haven't talked about this before, and I think it deserves some discussion.

This is obviously an issue for hunters, because both game animals and 'varmints' are, after being shot by hunters, subject to predation (when their injuries are not fatal) and scavenging (for carcasses) by other animals.

Yes, lead poisoning is a real danger.  Just like strychnine poisoning, the element moves up the food chain and often raptors are at the top of their own food chain.

As much as most hunters don't like the "No Lead-Based Ammunition" laws enacted by several states, we probably have to accept that this the wave of the future.   When you shoot a game animal,  using lead projectiles (this consequence is most common in shotgun pellets) and it is not a clean kill, the animal usually enters the food chain of scavengers.

(Note:  Benjamin Franklin was opposed to the acceptance of the American Bald Eagle as the National Emblem, or "Great Seal", because eagles are "creatures of low moral habits".  He preferred the Rattlesnake, probably as a reference to the "Don't Tread On Me", or "Gadsen" flag.)

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

Read on!

"Things I Learned From MY Father"

My father had a hobby-shop, where he built custom-stocked rifles.  It was a business, in the sense that he sold rifles.  Those sales provided him money to buy (and build) more rifles for himself, and eventually for me.   He called his business "The Stock Shop", and it was based in a corner of our garage.

But it was more of a hobby, than a business.  All he really wanted to do was to build beautiful rifles, and then prove that they were more accurate than anything available on the "open market".  Which he did.

He never owned a rifle he wouldn't sell. He use to make new rifles (often on the Springfield 1903-A3 war-surplus frames that he would by through the NRA for $25 each), and tear the Springfield apart to build something completely unlike what he started with.

He once built me a beautiful .30-06 for my first deer-hunting trip (when I turned 13), and it was so beautiful I almost cried.   It have a spring-loaded magazine base-plate that looked like gold.  Actually, it was anodized tin, and too light, but I was small and skinny and he was trying to save weight.   I loved that short little ought-six, and killed my first deer with it.

But by hunting season, he had got into the fast/light bullets thing, and insisted that I try the 100-grain hollow-point bullets he made by boring a cavity in the heavier Spitzer bullets that he could find.

He was right; the fast/light combination was a guaranteed one-shot kill on light game like Mule Deer.  But the first and only deer I killed with THAT bullet (running left-to-right, on a hillside in Eastern Oregon, at 100 yards) ... was a mess.  There was a tiny little dimple on the near side, hole the size of my thigh on the far side.  We lost a lot of meat, and cleaning the game was excessively yucky-making.

I killed three deer before I learned that usually, the hunter needs to bleed-out the meat first.  My meet was always bled out by the time I got to the gutting part.

Obama entirely clueless about 2nd Amendment: Nobody Surprised

Obama: Gun-control advocates have to listen more | General Headlines | Comcast:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says gun-control advocates have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes in the debate over firearms in America.

In an interview with The New Republic, Obama says he has "a profound respect" for the tradition of hunting that dates back for generations. "And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake. Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas," he says.

Obama has called for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and is pushing other policies following the mass shooting last month at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. In response, gun-rights advocates have accused Obama and others of ignoring the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

The president says it's understandable that people are protective of their family traditions when it comes to hunting. "So it's trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes," he says.

 Just who is it, not listening?

My goodness!  Is it possible that he has not been made aware by his Gun Czar that almost every state in the Union is a "Shall Issue" state?  And that this is a CONTINUING process?

Has it not even occurred to him to ask WHY states (and individual citizens .. of whom he is the presumptive leader) are so strongly coming out in support of the right to carry a concealed weapon?  Doesn't he recognize that this is entirely caused by the common citizenry who have not only lobbied for, but DEMANDED to defend themselves against predators?

(And, of course, a government running wild.  We're not there, and I hope we never find ourselves 'there'; but that IS the reason for the Second Amendment!)

Obama is not stupid.  Inept .. well .... I'll give you that one. Maybe.  Inexperienced, ill-advised, and a lot of other "I-words" which I will not suggest here because they may be interpreted as being Insulting to the office of the President of the United States of America.

Disingenuous?  Absolutely!

Obama is not unaware of the unrest in Red-State America. He knows that there is a strong drive for autonomy in the states, and a similarly powerful outrage in defense of our Constitutional freedoms.

He has taken this opportunity, and this tactic, to distance himself from the RKBA issues by blandly 'supporting' the rights of "his" citizens to continue their traditional "hunting rights".

By doing so, he has obviated the concept that the Second Amendment protects military arms ... firearms which may be used for non-hunting purposes.

(As often as I disparage Wikipedia, they have a very nice summary of 2nd Amendment history. I recommend it as a starting point for your own research.)

In US v Miller, the court essentially disallowed the possession of a 'sawed-off shotgun' because it could not be proven (no defense was offered!) that a similar weapon was a "military arm".  Had Miller offered a defense, he could have shown that "trench guns" were a common personal arm during WWI in the trenches; sawed-off shotguns were, and are, a military weapon.  But because of the lack of a defense, and the testimony to that effect was not offered by the (absent) defendant, the court had no alternative but to find for the State.

In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice McReynolds, the Supreme Court stated "the objection that the Act usurps police power reserved to the States is plainly untenable."^[140] As the Court explained:
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to any preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense

 (Emphasis added)

Essentially, the court ruled that military arms .. or firearms which were similar to military arms ... were defended by the Second Amendment.  No other arms --- certainly no 'civilian' arms ... were defended.  Why were the terms ". in the absence of any evidence.." and ".. cannot say ..." included?  That is because the judge recognized, and lamented the lack of defense, because Miller skipped the state before the trial.  Thus, he failed to offer a defense .. which would have been accepted by the judge, and would have formed an entirely different precedence in American Canon Law.  Bummer!

Thus, your Remington .270 may not be defended by the 2nd Amendment.  However, your Remington  .30-06 MAY be defended, because both the Garand and its predecessor the 1903 Springfield used that caliber.  The Garand may not be applicable to your Remington; but the 1903-A3 is a shoulder-fired bolt-action rifle in that same .30-06 caliber, so it is conceivably justifiable as a military arm.

Your Remington Model 1100 in 12 guage is iffy .. but if you cut off it's barrel to match the WWI Trench gun .. hey!  It's a Military weapon .. a Trench Gun!

Get the picture?

Obama .. does not.
In fact, he is ignoring the entire concept of the Second Amendment.  Deliberately.

Personally, I have no problem with a President lying to me.  Reagan did it all the time.  I lost respect for him, but I 'understood' the whole "Iran/Contra" thing. 

[I say this with tongue in cheek; nobody REALLY understood the twisted legal tactics employed by both sides in the extended affair.  Interpret my semi-facetious assertion to mean that I recognized the Reagan administration's intent to accomplish a "private goal" to undermine communist aggression in South America to be merely a logical extension of the Madison Doctrine, which  "... stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring U.S. intervention."]

Obama's game plan has nothing to do with the elements of Reagan's "I Miss-spoke" Iran/Contra hearings.  Obama is just acting dumb so he can ignore the essential elements of the Second Amendment.

It's rude, it's insulting to intelligent Americans, and that insult is compounded by the obvious implication that either (a) we are so stupid that we won't notice what he is doing, or (b) we are so insignificant that our opinion  doesn't matter.

I never much liked Barack Obama, either as a President or as a man.  But I have never been so personally insulted as I am now by his regal suggestion that the Second Amendment has been included into the Constitution of the United States of America so we could go kill a dear for dinner.

What does he think he is?  Is he a King ruling over a bunch of Nimrods, or Dimwads?

I do fear for the future of this country, when an elected President can so thinly conceal his calumny under the guise of ignorance .... and enough of our citizens care so little for the constitution that they seem to accept his facade of ignorance without comment.

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.