Despite some vehicular problems we discovered early in the morning (who needs to go in reverse, anyway?) we drove around until we had decided we had had our fill of not seeing deer, then headed down out of the mountains to flatter ground.
As we drove along the highway looking for a good place to turn off into the foothills, Doug spotted some antelope about 40 yards off the road. We bailed out and gave chase, and I shot, and shot, and SHOT, but those things run so fast (Wikipedia informs me it's the second-fasted land animal, second only to the cheetah). I guess I just wasn't leading them by enough. We chased them, a herd which included a nice buck, back and forth across the desert for a while, with probably three or four repetitions of what I just described. After enough of that humiliation (by the way, it's probably a good thing for his sake that my Grandpa Grover passed away some time ago and wasn't there to see all of the aforementioned missing, because I probably wouldn't have helped his blood pressure much) we decided to drive up the mountain a bit and then stopped to eat lunch and pop of a few rounds with the pistols at some pop cans on fence posts.
I must admit that during lunch I was feeling pretty down on myself. I'd already gone through more shells than I care to admit without hitting anything. Luckily Dad tried to boost my self esteem and Doug reassured me that antelope hunting often involves a lot of missing, so I decided all was not yet lost.
As we came back down, we saw a herd of antelope way off across the desert. Jim directed the truck in the general direction of the herd, through the sage brush down over a bumpy, barely-defined dirt road. As fate would have it, this took us fairly close to the herd, but they were just starting to go up over a ridge where they would be out of our sight. As we pulled up, we realized this was the herd we'd been chasing earlier, the one with the nice buck.
We piled out and started towards them. "Are they even close enough to shoot?" I asked my father. "That gun will shoot a lot farther than you think," he replied. I raised the 7mm to my shoulder for the umpteenth shot of the day, sighted in the big buck, and pulled the trigger. "You shot behind him again," I was told. I jacked another shell in placed the crosshairs a full body length in front of the buck, and squeezed as I continued to swing in the direction he was running.
The bullet hit him in the neck, just in front of the shoulder, and flipped him clear around in the air. We all whooped for joy, and Doug and I walked out across the sagebrush to find him. Jim and Dad stayed behind to direct us to where he went down and to range the distance of the shot with Doug's range finder.
Doug and I finished walking the 405 yards to where I hit him. He hadn't moved from the spot; he was dead before he hit the ground.
I wasn't disappointed when I saw him up close. He was a big buck: 14 inch horns, 6.5 inches around at the base.
Anyway, after some more high-fiving and admiring we field dressed him and loaded him into the back of the pickup. When Dad and I got him home we caped him so I can take it in to the taxidermist to have it mounted. Andrea has graciously agreed, and even suggested the currently-empty wall above the entertainment center in our family room its final resting place.
Anyway, it was a terrific day. I might have missed a few shots, but it only takes one. I deal in lead.
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