USA: Pronghorn Antelope Hunt Report - Big Goals And Small Regrets

Scouting by the guides turned up some interesting prospects...

This ranch is located in far SW TX and is south of Carlsbad Caverns, NM. As big as TX is, it's still interesting that part of TX is south of its western border with NM. It's about a 7 hour drive from DFW. You know it's a big ranch when Hwy 10 splits it almost in half and there are multiple highway exits onto the ranch in the middle of nowhere. In many places on the ranch, the farthest viewpoints in all directions are still well inside the ranch boundaries.

When I got there the guides had just finished guiding several clients to aoudad successfully. I was the 2nd client to be hunting antelope this season and the 3rd and final tag would be hunted as I was leaving my hunt. The facilities were basic ranch housing for the cowboys as this is a working cattle ranch. Food was simple but good and plentiful. I got there the afternoon before my hunt officially started but the guide said let's check your gun and start hunting! I was hunting with a Gunwerks 6.5 PRC that has taken about a dozen animals cleanly in the last 2 years. We shot the 200 yard target and all was good to go. I was a little under the weather due to a recovering cough but was ready to get out and see some big country. The guide was very pleasant and easy to talk to and his gear was in good shape...good optics and a 2025 4x4 F150, which became our home for the next 3 days.

Stunning animal!!! Pronghorn is in my bucket list animal for América, i have to find time and go

Pronghorn hunting is all about covering some ground and the smartest way to do that is by glassing. We spent a lot of time glassing then moving to cover different angles of these large pastures (one was 30k acres). We put hundreds of miles on the dirt and gravel roads on the ranch...then moving onto tractor paths in between the roads...then getting out of the truck to hike to an angle to see what was behind everything. Any little side angle could (and did) reveal more hiding places and we found a lot of antelope doing this. The first day we were covering as much ground as possible. I had brought a spotting scope and tripod and the guide had his as well. Sometimes I found the goats and sometimes he did but he was much better at spotting random shapes while driving quickly to get to other vantage points for glassing.

That first day we found and marked as options, 4 mature goats...2 in the southern part of the ranch and 2 north of the highway. They were all close on size but the largest one was north of the highway. Why does that matter? Well it shouldn't but that afternoon we were told by the landowner that he had closed hunting on the north part of the ranch due to construction and some language in the contract that required closing that area to hunting. I was very disappointed by this and the outfitter and guides were embarrassed. It put them into a bad position, particularly since the largest goat so far was on that side of the ranch. We were hunting miles away from any of the construction but all of the north side was now closed to us. I wish we had never gone there as it was hard to walk away from the largest antelope. There was one on the north side that was broken in 1/2 on one side but his mass was so obviously larger that the guide said, "If he wasn't broken like that, we would be done looking right now!" The outfitter offered to refund my $ to end the hunt but I didn't want it to end and certainly not in this way.

We went back to the ranch house to cool off both physically and emotionally. That one was tough.

Excited to follow along, Trans Pecos region is special!

You are hunting with Top O' Texas outfitter correct?

I love hunting pronghorns. I have hunted in WYO, NM, TX and CO. Nearly all of them have been 14"-15" and measured about 75" B&C. I have one at 79 1/2".
They are fun to hunt, hard to judge and a very enjoyable outing.
I am still looking for Mr. 82" !

dchum said:

Excited to follow along, Trans Pecos region is special!

You are hunting with Top O' Texas outfitter correct?

Click to expand...

Correct...Scottie's operation. Ryan was my guide who is also friends with @Mtn_Infantry. I didn't know it before but Ryan is one of the best archery guides for aoudad free range; one of the toughest archery hunts around...and Scottie specializes in these hunts.

Green Chile said:

Correct...Scottie's operation. Ryan was my guide who is also friends with @Mtn_Infantry. I didn't know it before but Ryan is one of the best archery guides for aoudad free range; one of the toughest archery hunts around...and Scottie specializes in these hunts.

Click to expand...

Ya nobody out there is putting Archery clients in front of old rams like those guys do.

They have a lot of experienced guides doing it year around. Aoudad are unique for that as exotics that don't shed antlers and don't have seasons. You can find old rams anytime of year.

dogcat1 said:

I love hunting pronghorns. I have hunted in WYO, NM, TX and CO. Nearly all of them have been 14"-15" and measured about 75" B&C. I have one at 79 1/2".
They are fun to hunt, hard to judge and a very enjoyable outing.
I am still looking for Mr. 82" !

Click to expand...

That is the mark that is so hard to beat. A 75" goat is great and far above average. An 80" plus goat is really special. I never hunt for scores except for with goats for some reason.

The next 2 days were long hours of glassing and moving to every vantage point we could find. If there were any areas we couldn't see into, we would shift positions, even driving all the way around to the other side 1-2 miles away to check every angle that could hide game. We were always looking for groups of does and trying to find their herd buck. There were a few times we couldn't find him as he likely was courting a doe in some little hiding spot out of sight to us. There were numerous times when we just saw a lone buck or two and we always took a close look at those. We slowly gathered a handful of options of bucks we felt were close to 80 inches...or at least 75+.

That brings up scoring of antelope. I personally think they are one of the hardest animals to score. There are some professional book and video resources out there that can help you (Eli Grimmett of Pronghorn Guide Services). They have a very nice resource of showing photos of hard to measure bucks and then walking you through why that animal was larger or smaller than you realized. I highly recommend you increase your knowledge through those kinds of resources. It will give you a chance to converse with the guide, asking about the 3rd mass measurement, etc.

We had one interesting scenario where I certainly made a mistake. The guide was driving on a cattle trail and pulled over to get out. He said let's check the edge of this real quick. So he left his spotter/tripod and I left my rifle/tripod at the truck and we just jogged over to check the edge with our binos. It had kind of a false summit feel and the edge wasn't where we thought it was. We kept adjusting and before long we were a good distance from the truck. He said let's check that edge over there before heading back. I was behind him when he got to the edge and his binos came up immediately. He started cussing and said that buck is going to run all the way up hill to challenge us. Sure enough a big buck came up in that funny little run they can do for miles. When he stopped, he was 118 yards from us in the wide open and we were caught just standing there...no gun...nowhere to hide. He was a beautiful mature buck and right on the edge of what we were looking for. I was pretty irritated with myself for making a rookie mistake by leaving the gun behind. You never know when that short walk turns into something else entirely! You also get lulled into thinking that they always run away from you but they are so curious that sometimes they run directly at you. There are also many tricks to get one to challenge you...like waving a piece of clothing or trash bag. This one certainly caught us off guard and he was a very nice goat.

I think we have all learned the hard way to never go anywhere without your gun

I hit the laughing face, because, many of us have been there.

Keep after it. I'm sitting in my living room with 3 pronghorn mounts, all beautiful to look at. An 80+ goat is hard to find. Best of luck to you. I hope you find what you are looking for.

At this point, we had located a couple more bucks in the south side of the ranch and had done what we could to forget about the north side debacle. The guide and I spent some time discussing what we had scouted and pointing out little things we didn't like about this buck or that buck. Because that 3rd mass measurement can be above or below the prongs, it can make a difference of 2-4 inches of scoring...and remember that's per side so x2. It's all the difference between a 75-78" buck and an 80-82" B&C entry. This is where I have to admit that I have some small regrets about chasing a score instead of an experience. I never do that on other animals. I'm almost always after the oldest male we can find and could care less if horns are broken or tips are worn down. Those are the ones I love to take! For some reason, I have always wanted a B&C pronghorn. I haven't registered my other large trophies and I can't really explain or justify this desire for record book sized goat. I was thinking about it as we discussed and debated which goat we should go back and try to take. We were a little stuck in that NONE of the goats on the south side of the ranch were clearly over 80 inches. We found several that were 75+ but not obviously bigger than that without putting a measuring tape on them. I remember thinking this is not normal for me to be thinking like this and it's starting to detract from my experience. I said let's go back and find the one from this morning as he was as good as anything else we've seen. I wanted to be done with the mental measuring exercises and just take a nice one cleanly.

We drove back towards the big pasture where we had located a good buck that morning. It was an illusive setup as we could see the buck and his does when the sun was behind us but not when we got closer to them and the light changed. We drove that path several times and then the guide counted over to which utility pole was on the road nearest them. We parked the truck and walked in with about 1 hour of light left. I love that last hour of light...the magic hour when light softens and you can feel the change in the air.

Well as goats do, they were moving on us and it took longer than expected to catch up to them. The buck was at the front walking away from us and the does were looking back at us. We were running out of time and the guide said let's try something...let's just walk right at the does to see if they will let us cut some distance. This time it worked and we cut the distance from 600 yards to 220. I got on the tripod quickly and the guide ranged the distance. As the words came out of his mouth the bullet was on the way and hit him on the point of the shoulder quartering back towards us. He had finally seen us just before the shot. I saw him fall in the recoil of the scope and the hit echoed back to us. As we got closer to him, Ryan said he's bigger than I thought. I said I don't know what he is but thanks for putting up with this nonsense!

Congratulations. That’s a pretty goat. They are my favorite animal to hunt state side.

Nice pronghorn Bryan, congrats!

Congrats on your hunt, I know which ranch that was. I met TLJ in San Antone once and we got to talking about his place out there and polo ponies. He’s kind of a jerk though. I got my goat in Marfa way back in the 90’s that scored 75. They truly are some weird critters!