Opening day was a blast. We didn't end up getting our #1 target buck. He moved onto private 2 days before the season. But we did have good success going after our #2 buck.
We setup on a good glassing poing about half an hour before legal light. When it was light enough to see, we spotted the herd around a water tank out about 1200 yards in front of us. We made our move.
Between us and the antelope was a small canyon with a creek at the bottom. It was only a couple hundred feet deep so we decided to drop down in and climb the other side. On our way down we spotted a beautiful chocolate black bear feeding on choke cherries. I didn't pack my bear tag. My wife had hers. Earlier this spring, my wife had given birth to our first child. Knowing that she wasn't going to be able to hunt spring bear this year she hadn't thought about taking her Idaho Bear ID test. We sat on the hill watching this bear at 90 yards for over 20 minutes while the link for the Bear ID test kept redirecting us for her to retake her Hunters Ed class. Eventually the bear wandered off to into the brush no wiser that a legal technicality kept him alive. The hunt for him will continue in the coming days.
Once we climed out of the canyon, we made our way towards the herd using the topography to hide our movement. We got to a small ridge. I slowly kept up to peek over. The antelope were at 400 yards on the next ridge over. We got into to position and set the rifle up. The antelope we slowly grazing towards us. At first we could see 5 does. After watching for about 10 minutes, a buck appeared. I asked my wife if she wanted it. She said yes. At this point, I had only known of 1 buck hanging out with this group of does. I thought this was our #2 buck. It wasn't. But we didn't find out until about 30 seconds after she shot.
I ranged it at 423 yards. I kept that to myself. I told her to dial 7 minutes into the elevation. We had a perfect prone position with bipod and rear bag. I got the phone scope setup while she was getting comfortable behind the rifle. I started recording. When he stopped moving he was slightly quartering away. My wife broke the shot. She hit back a little bit but it was a solid liver shot. The buck collapsed right there and he was laying on the ground dead 30 seconds later.
We were stoked. I congratued her and gave her a big hug. We looked back towards her dead buck and saw the remaining herd run over to it to investigate. From.just behind the ridge they were on, a larger buck came running up. I saw it through the spotter and quicker realized, that was our #2 buck and not the one she just dropped. She asked, "Are you gonna shoot it?". It took about 2 seconds for me to decide that I would seeing that it was noticeably larger. I rolled in behind the rifle and sent another shot. Perfect double lung that dropped him just 30 yards from where her buck was already laying.
