First I would like to thank my good friend Drew for letting my son Kaleb and I hunt on the ranch again.
Rifle--Hartford 45 2 4/10 tight chamber, 550 grain round nose .441 pure lead bullet wrapped with 9lbs onion skin paper. 85 grains of 1F swiss, .025 card, 3/16 lube, .025 card.
The morning started out at 3:45 a.m., I rolled out of bed to start the coffee pot and as soon as I hit the start button Kaleb was right behind me to scare the crap out of me, I said why are you awake already, well Dad I've been up for a hour waiting on you to wake me up. Boy he wasn't excited to go hunting. A quick shower and we were loading the gear to meet my friends at the gas station. Two hours of driving brought us in on the summer camp, well that's what they call it anyway, its about 4 miles x 4 miles of sage brush and antelope. With in 2 hours Drew and Jen both had dandy antelope down with the 30-06, now it was my turn. We stopped and had lunch, Kaleb had been hounding me since we started driving early this morning to shoot his .22, so after a quick bite Kaleb punched some holes in a water bottle, well like 30 of them at 25 feet, what a joy to watch your son take interest in the shooting sports. We loaded up the trucks and headed to the main ranch. As we entered the ranch on top of the hill I noticed 2 bucks standing at the bottom about a half mile away, we drove on down the road past them and took off on a sneak. I asked Kaleb if he wanted to do another sneek, he said no dad my legs are tired, so he stayed with Drews wife at the trucks. Drew and I walked about 300 yards until we couldn't hide anymore, down on the bellies we went, watching out for cactus and snakes as we crawled in line with some sage brush that was about 10'' tall. After a long crawl and some cactus in us we reached the sage brush that had been covering us for so long. We both got up just enough just to see over the sage brush, there was now 6 antelope bucks, Drew ranged the biggest at 156 yards. I got up on my butt and as I was getting ready to pull the trigger a smaller buck walked behind the one I wanted to kill. So the waiting game began, within a few minutes the buck walked away from the main herd a few yards giving me a broadside shot. A bang and a thud latter the buck was down. The bullet blew both shoulders out and put him down for a dirt nap. There you have it, my 2010 antelope hunt.
Stephen Borud
