Antelope Hunting Tips for First-Time Spot & Stalk?

[Ariolas]

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to learn more about antelope hunting, especially spot-and-stalk strategies in open country. From what I’ve read, they seem extremely alert and challenging to close distance on.

For those with experience:

• What approach has worked best for you?
• Gear or optics you consider essential?
• Common mistakes beginners make?

Would appreciate any advice or lessons learned from the field.

 

[Logan2338]

Are you chasing them with a bow or gun? They seem un bothered when your chasing mule deer in the area if that helps lol

 

[Kurts86]

The terrain in the unit or even part of the unit really matters. A little more terrain but not too rough it still holds pronghorn makes stalks easier. Some of the dead flat units get tricky if you don’t have a wash to use.

Essential gear would be knee pads, leather gloves and tweezers to pull cactus.

A good shooting tripod is essential. Sage brush tends to be about 1” taller than your bipod more often than not.

Getting a tag is the hardest part of pronghorn hunting. Once you have that you can blow a lot of stalks. It’s really common to get 3-4 stalks a day.

Optics don’t matter to find pronghorn. Their white butts give them away. Optics really matter to field judge a buck. I wouldn’t sweat buck size on the first hunt.

 

[wapitibob]

Drive, spot, sneak closer via available terrain, shoot.
Glass a lot, don't drive very far without glassing again, they appear out of nowhere. Most will glass from the truck as shown by the worn out glassing spot in the 1st pic. That would have blown the Pronghorn out and I wouldn't have gotten the shot. As it turned out, they had no clue I was there. Get out and look over the other side of the hills and into the little hidden valleys

 

[7RemMag]

Antelope are not generally difficult to hunt. Lots of guys kill them every year by driving around in the pickup until they find one that they want that is in a location conducive to a stalk. Getting off the beaten path a little bit can sometimes improve your odds of coming across larger bucks, or at the very least, goats that might not have been pressured quite as much.

As far as optics, you don’t *need* anything fancy. A half decent pair of binos and a decent spotting scope are plenty sufficient.

Get a tag and go hunt. With a reasonable amount of effort, you will likely have numerous opportunities.