An Archery Antelope Story.
Hunting antelope with a bow is not easy.
No, I’m not talking about sitting on water in a blind hoping for some creature to appear before you lose your mind. I’m talking spot and stalk in eastern Montana in August. Rolling hills. Searing heat. Buggy. Crummy tent more like a sauna. No running water. Funky. However, for some reason my boys and I plus an intrepid buddy kinda like it. Our buddy is a pretty decent athlete but a ‘lope hunting newby, and is also challenged with all of the patience that God gave a hummingbird.
There were a few good bucks around, but spread over miles and miles of pretty unforgiving eastern Montana terrain. One buck in particular is a rascal I spotted in these parts 3 years earlier. Hunted him and watched him grow up to the point where he was pretty dang handsome and mature. We’ll call him, “Buddy Buck.” Such cool critters.
We hunt by foot and backpack only. Well, I do. My newby friend, let’s call him “Tim”, went out and bought some of the craziest antelope hunting paraphernalia you can imagine. Starting with an electric bike.
“Dude, it's quieter than you can hike.”
“Really. What about that whirring and buzzing noise? Plus, you seem to crash it about ten times a day.”
“F*ck you. This thing is sweet. I’ll be racing around all over this place while you are sweating your balls off.”
“Who told you it was a race?”
He managed to sucker my boys into going to the dark side and trying this contraption before, by the grace of almighty God, they saw the light, regained their senses, and have returned to the backpack hunting brotherhood.
To his credit, my friend “Tim” is pretty handy around camp. Since he can’t sit still a minute, he scavenges a lot, and managed to wrangle up some old juniper fence posts and planks that have been laying around the eastern Montana plain since the days of Lonesome Dove. Before you could say “jimminy crickets” he banged them together into the shape of a rustic outdoor Bar (my friend “Tim” is a bit of a boozer). When Cortez hit the New World, the first thing he did was to burn his ships. For motivation. When Tim hits a new patch of earth, first thing he does is to build a new Bar. For motivation. Set in the shade between some Ponderosa and overlooking a gorgeous creek bottom drainage framed dramatically beneath a 1000 foot tall sheer sandstone cliff face, “Tim”’s newest Bar is sort of like a Montana Tiki-bar and, unbeknownst to “Tim”, makes for an excellent spot from which to glass deer, elk and antelope.
(events of this story took place top right of the Bulleit Rye bottle)
Early one hot August morning, after a late sesh at “Tim’s tiki-Bar,” I left out of the sauna/tent wearing only a grey Duckworth tee, my thin cotton jammie pants, and an old pair of beloved leather slippers on my feet (in which I also shot an Alaska brown bear, but that’s a story for another time.) Still dark, I wandered cautiously down toward Tiki-town which doubles nicely as an outdoor coffee shop. Fired up the jet boil, fixed the little coffee strainer thingy onto my Yeti mug, poured a healthy pile of freshly ground Montana “Rut Mud” coffee into the strainer thingy, sat down on a juniper board bench, and threw up my binos in the dark. I don’t know about you guys, but early morning glassing in the pre-shooting-time gloam, is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Bang, decent velvet mulie buck grazing away on the hillside of the sandstone cliff opposite Tiki-town. Nope, make that two. There’s number three. Cool. Hombre looks pretty decent all dressed up in his August velvet. Tempting come deer opener a couple weeks down the road.
Jet boil starts to steam. I like a rolling boil. Turned her off and poured over the Rut Mud gold. Ahh, that first sip of morning joe, velvet mulie bucks on the hillside. Pretty hard to beat.
In case you are wondering, “Tim” is still fast asleep. Doesn’t quite get the “first light”, “last light” thing just yet. Suits me just fine, of course.
Sip, sip, glass. Sip, sip, glass. More deer, does, yearlings and young of the year this time. Not easy to find so I always love turning them up. Getting pretty close to shooting time, half hour before sunrise, and the haunting beauty of eastern Montana is waking up.
Out of habit, I strap on my release and pick up my bow. This time of year in this camp, I habitually leave my bow on the bar when I sack out, right there on my glassing spot. Release on my wrist, set my bow back down on the bar. Another sip of coffee.
As I reach for my binos to take another look at the hillside, I see movement to my right out of the corner of my eye. Low and behold, old Buddy Buck himself is slowly moving from my right to left not 100 yards in front of Tiki-town. “You gotta be sh*tting me,” I think to myself. Frozen now, it becomes clear to me that he is going to feed and amble along until he passes right behind a nice big juniper that is halfway between him and me. Dead calm, no wind I can feel at all. Buddy Buck moves behind the juniper, I grab bow and rangefinder and haul ass toward the juniper that is now squarely between me and him. Being as we are not far from Custer’s last stand, in my buffalo-hide moccasins, I sort of visualize myself as a young Northern Cheyenne warrior creeping my way swiftly but silently across the Montana prairie. At the same time, in the back of my mind I can’t help but chuckle at the prospect of arrowing this great antelope buck in my slippers while my pal “Tim” is still in the rack. Poetic justice and an object lesson in master class hunting for my newby pal, I think to myself while gliding across the tan grass.
Sometimes, it all works. Buddy Buck feeds in front of the juniper. I stealthily throw up my rangefinder. 30 yards. Oh the joy! Nock arrow silently. Come to full draw. Bucky is broadside, blissfully unaware that a skilled Cheyenne warrior has drawn down on him. Second pin in perfect position, I let fly. Full flat f*cking miss.
“Sh*t!”, I think to myself, just as I also now feel the force of my morning cup of Rut Mud working its way through the previous night’s ration of hot Italian sausage. I nock arrow number 2 as, miraculously, Bucky boy continues to feed defiantly in Trumpian, near-assasination-like fashion. Range 35 yards. Ok, redemption time. Draw, fire, f*cking miss again! “You lame ass moron,” I think to myself just as I now catch view of my friend “Tim” looking over the entire drama sipping an Italian espresso at the Tiki-bar.
At this point, a veteran antelope buck who has managed to stay alive against the odds of coyotes, lions, birds of prey, bobcat, drought, freezing winters and plenty of hunters is saying to himself, “Wholly crap, this guy in his jammie pants is some kind of lame-ass.” He saunters slowly away, safe in the knowledge that the strange man in the juniper is no threat, into the bottom of the dry creek bed that runs through the bottom of the drainage. As he drops out of view into the drainage, your intrepid archer refuses to take defeat and humiliation for an answer. He lurches forward.
Miraculously, Bucky gives me a third shot, basically now sticking his tongue out at me saying, “na na na na na naw!” Yep, you guessed it, 0 for 3. Now I am three things: 1) pissed; 2) beginning to have to clench my glutes in order to forestall the inevitable Rut Mud; and 3) out of arrows.
Shame and humiliation begin to compete with the Rut Mud as I slink back through the bottom of the drainage, climb the other side and emerge looking toward the Tiki bar. Halfway up the hill toward my now cold cup of coffee, I see “Tim” striding off confidently in full camo, boots laced up, chest out, game face on, in the direction of the world’s luckiest ‘lope buck. “This is going to be awesome!”, he smugly thinks to himself, although secretly not sure if he should go back and get his electric bike. We pass like Joe Montana and Steve Young at Candlestick, Joe all bloodied and beaten, Steve all cocky and full of promise. “Move over old man, let me show you how this is done.”
Head down but moving fast, sweating through my jammies with dirt in my moccasins, I manage to get to the hand dug latrine in the nick of time. Absolutely unload! Quick clean up, hit the tent/sauna. Off with the mocs, on with the socks and Timberlines. Time’s a wasting, so that’s the only wardrobe change allowed. Restock the quiver, out the tent/sauna flap lickity split.
Now I high tail it to a perch above Tiki-town where I can survey the tragic situation. By now, my oldest son, Michael, aka “Big Mike”, has arisen and is at the Tiki bar working on the Jetboil. He also got the tripod and spotter working and is digiscoping.
Instantly, I find “Tim” in my binos. He is looking a lot like the Tourons of Yellowstone. He has managed to “sneak” his way up a finger drainage to within about 150 yards of Buddy Buck, who is feeding calmly in the open meadow. Now, however, “Tim” is basically screwed as Bucky slowly feeds away. Eventually, the gravity of the situation dawns on “Tim” and he retreats to the main drainage, hooks a northbound, and commences moving in the drainage in the direction of Bucky.
As I watch “Tim” march ahead, he reaches another finger that hooks eastward, right at Buddy Buck maybe 250 yards out. Off he goes, high stepping his way like a German on parade. These fingers are fairly steep, deep and full of juniper, sage, rocks and other stuff that makes the trek a tad technical. While this unfolds, I glass over to Bucky and watch him calmly bed in the morning shade of a young juniper. Halftime is over, the horn sounds and I bound off my perch, back in the game with a new spring in my step. I put “Tim”’s odds of arrowing any antelope, especially this one, at lottery level.
The terrain allows me to make double time all the way to “Tim”’s new finger that leads right up to Bucky’s bed. I can scoot along pretty fast along the north rim of the finger, avoiding the knar and foliage on the bottom, without being seen by Bucky. This fact seems to elude “Tim”, who was slashing and burning his way through the finger jungle like Merriweather Lewis trying to ford the Great Falls. Before long, we are getting into the zone. I find a spot where I can be still and observe my friend and competitor in the final throes of his epic adventure. Yup, sure enough, holding back the belly laugh, I watch “Tim” as he walks right past and then all the way around our bedded Buck. Unbelievable.
As fate would have it, just as Tim passes harmlessly out of sight, utterly confused as to how his sure thing buck managed to vanish into thin air like that, a gorgeous fresh wind picks up at about 5 to 10 miles per hour out of the south and right into my face and Bucky’s nose. Painstaking now, I am back into warrior mode and scoot, crawl and inch my way ever closer to old Lucky Bucky, with a friendly August breeze as my new best friend. Just as I can see the tip of one horn at about 40 yards below me directly in line with the wind, I see Steve Young with his shoulders sloped, dejectedly quitting the field of battle.
With a few prickly pear stickers in my butt through my jammie bottoms, I have managed to move sloth-like into a pretty sweet position. He’s below me now at 15 yards, bedded. All I can see is the top half of his horns. I decide to sit tight and wait for him to stand up. Every 10 minutes or so, I scoot ever so slowly on my butt and gain enough vantage to be about 12 yards and can see all of his horns. Figure if I stand and draw back, I’ll have the back of his neck at 12 yards.
Back at the Tiki Bar, Steve Young arrives, a frustrated and bewildered competitor. Big Mike has been recording the entire game with an iPhone and a sweet 95mm ATX Swaro on a tripod from the cool morning shade of Tiki land.
“Tim” starts in with a slew of complaints and excuses as to how Bucky must have winded him and blown out of the country; how global warming has made it too hot for this sport anyway; how he wishes he had ridden his electric bicycle so he could have spotted him and outraced him across the prairie. On and on…
Things amp up a notch when Big Mike informs “Tim” that Big Mike’s old man is even now crouched ten yards from bedded Bucky and is preparing to settle the matter once and for all.
“You gotta be f*cking sh*tting me!” “Tim”’s head is absolutely spinning. Processing now a complete 180 degree reversal of fortune: The sweet bragging rights of having seen his lame buddy miss this buck until his quiver ran dry, and full of the knowledge that this sport is super easy, and figuring what type of Italian sauces would go well with grilled Lope loin, to, bang, the agony of an imminent defeat all in the span of a couple short hours one August morning. Like Moses going from the Prince of Egypt to a Hebrew slave overnight. Such are the highs and lows of tag team buddies spot and stalk antelope in Eastern Montana, when there is absolutely zero competition among hunting buddies.
“F*ck me! I can’t f*cking believe it. I must have walked right around him.”
Big Mike: “Yup. Got it all on video.”
“Tim”: “What a stupid sport.”
***
By now, your intrepid warrior is himself growing a tad stiff and impatient. Time to make a move. Arrow nocked, solid footing, perfect wind. Despite the few inexplicable misses from a few hours ago, got my war paint/gameface on now, at long last. Stand up, draw back, have a perfect solid shot that will be lethal or incapacitating. Over in Tiki-town, Big Mike and “Tim” realize that the moment of truth has arrived, watching the scene on Mike’s iPhone in real time. Summoning superhuman strength, “Tim” can be heard whispering now from 700 yards away, “Get him jonny.” The precise level of genuineness in that remark is a question shrouded in mystery for the ages. “Miss him again you lamo,” is a distinctly possible translation of the dejected gladiator’s inner psyche.
At last, the hunt is over and this magnificent mature old buck is in hand. That evening, around the Tiki Bar, with fresh antelope steaks on the small grill, the boys recount the events of the day. Big Mike was able to run through some of the footage, complete with his expert editorial and commentary. The biggest belly laughs came when the camera panned away from the bedded buck and hunter, across the plain to a defeated teammate striding home from the field of battle.
Big Mike: “In a strange development, “Tim” has quit the game and is heading home.” That, together with, upon Tim’s arrival back at Tiki-bar,
“The old man is about to kill him.”
“You gotta be f*cking kidding me.”
The fresh lope loin was absolutely delicious.
Headline next morning, “Montana kicks Young’s ass.”
