First Time Pronghorn Hunt

By Denny L. Vasquez

The first gray light of the approaching dawn was just beginning to make it’s presence known on the distant eastern horizon as the sun began it’s daily journey from the behind the Black Hills. In the pale grey light we could just make out the small herd buck as he and his does started their daily routine in the distance. But today was his lucky day as because of his short, 12 inch horns and unimpressive prongs, we wouldn’t be hunting him this time around. In a few more minutes, when it became legal hunting light, we would start making our way towards where we had bedded down a 14 1/2 inch buck with 5 inch prongs the night before.

After spending the previous day learning how to field judge pronghorn antelope bucks, we had finally spotted a couple of good ones, quite by accident and when it was almost too dark to tell how good they really were. All we knew is that one of them had presented us with a magnificent view of his long, heavy, heart shaped horns. We had spotted him on a side ledge of the most prominent hill in the area just as the sun was setting in all of it’s colorful glory. The golden light provided a beautiful back drop as he posed for us in silhouette. This fading light of the retreating sun highlighted his shiny black horns causing them to seem larger than they could possibly have been. It was truly one of the most memorable sights that I have from my hunting career.

The other buck, the one that I thought I wanted to pursue, had last been seen settling in for the night with his does smack dab in the middle a wide, open valley in which cover taller than a foot was almost non-existent. He was at least 14 inches but had exceptionally long prongs and appeared to have very heavy mass that carried all the way to his tips. For a first time antelope hunter, he was a very impressive buck and would be a good first animal. That is, if we could crawl to within shooting distance. As it turns out he was never seen again after that first sighting.

Now in the early morning light of the opening day of antelope season here in northeastern Wyoming, we were trying to make our way back to the same hill on which we had spotted the first buck. If Mother Nature felt like being kind to hunters today, we should find him in the vicinity of the hill. According to my guide, Dwight Van Brunt, who was the Burris Company’s Director of Marketing and Sales at the time this hunt took place, antelope are extremely territorial and usually don’t leave their home territory unless due to heavy hunting pressure, seeking food or water, to pursue a doe in heat or due to a natural catastrophe. By prior agreement, Pete Fossleman, associate editor of “Gun World” magazine at the time, would try his luck at taking the hill side buck.

The area that we were hunting was on a private ranch located just northwest of Moorecroft, Wyoming. Around an hour’s drive from the famous Devil’s Tower and the Black Hills. Not far from the Thunder Basin region. The terrain of the area is mostly treeless wide open valleys that contain various grasses and sage brush, and are surrounded by low rolling hills. Though, occasionally a hill will rise several hundred feet above it’s smaller brothers. The only trees are found in the small protected folds between the hills and along the somewhat scarce water ways. Because of the scarcity of water, there are numerous manmade water holes accompanied by the tell-tell wind mill scattered across the 12,000 acres of this lonely, wind swept ranch land.

Pete and I had been invited by Dwight to come along on the annual Burris Company’s prairie dog and antelope hunt for 1994. So here it was October 1st and after a very satisfying day of prairie dog shooting and antelope scouting, we were both excited about the prospects of the antelope portion of the hunt and trying out the various new optical products that are available from Burris.

My choice of firearm for this hunt was a custom rifle from Gordon Gritters of Gordy’s Gun Shop. Gordy put together a sturdy and reliable precision made workhorse that I have come to call “Getter” because of it’s ability to always get it’s game, especially, when I do my part. This is a very beautiful piece that pictures just can not do justice to. Gordy made “Getter” in .7mm Remington magnum, my caliber of choice in the under .300 magnum calibers.

The heart of any firearm is the action, and Gordy chose to make the heart of Getter out of a brand new Sako L691 Magnum action in blued steel. After carefully reworking the action to true it up, he lapped the bolt lugs on the stainless steel bolt. Then he permanently installed the recoil lug for a more precise fit to the action and reworked the trigger assembly to a crisp 3 lb. let off. This attention to detail has resulted in a finely tuned instrument where the bolt travels on it’s rails as if on air and the trigger has a clean crisp let off that would be the envy of all factory guns.

After carefully reworking, the G. McMillan & Co. stainless steel match grade barrel blank was then matched up and trued to the action for an eye pleasing precision fitted combination. The barrel has a contour of .0650 inches and a 1 in 9 inch twist. This rate of twist will allow it to handle all of the appropriate .284 caliber bullets that I would need in a hunting situation.

A Pacific Precision Grinding reamer was used to ground the chamber for the tight tolerances of the minimum SAMII dimensions of my chosen caliber. A Go gauge was used to set the head spacing to zero and the barrel blank was then cut down to a 24 inch length. Then a lathe was used to turn a custom recessed 11 degree crown on the barrel that was then threaded for a perfect fit to the muzzle break’s threads. All of the barrel work was done in a lathe with both ends of the bore dial indicated to run perfectly true so that all threading, chambering and crowning is as true to the centerline as is possible.

The muzzle break that Gordy chose to utilize is a VAIS #4. It was custom contoured to match the barrel and installed with a light torque and Loc-Tite to keep the bore from being distorted at the muzzle. After installation, the exit hole was trued in a lathe so that it would be perfectly concentric to the bore. This allows the high pressure gas to flow uniformly around the bullet as the it leaves the bore. Since the muzzle break is made of blued steel, it also adds to the overall appearance of the firearm.

The camo-laminated stock was created by Henry Lawson of Tucson, Arizona. After inletting the stock for the barreled action and bottom metal, a pillar bedding was added using Devcon aluminum. After the bedding was checked with a dial indicator to insure that it was stress free, the barrel was free floated as wood was machined out of the barrel channel and the rear of the stock to lighten it by half a pound. The stock was then cut to a 14 inch length of pull and had a Pachmayer Decelerator recoil pad installed. Then it was finished to it’s final shape and the forearm was shortened 3/4 of an inch. After sanding and hand rubbing the stock with Tru-Oil, it was rubbed down with triple “F” rubbing compound for a nice satin look. After a couple of coats of stock wax, it was torqued to the action with 60 lbs. of torque.

A firearm that has been made with this much care and effort deserves only the best optics. Therefore, Dwight provided one of the Burris Company’s best optics to be mounted on top of this unique firearm. Getter’s eyepiece was to be one of Burris’ 2 1/2 X 10 PosiLock Signature Series rifle scopes in a matte black finish with an adjustable parallax. The Posi-Lock feature replaces the tiny springs used in other rifle scopes with a steel post that guarantees a zero that will hold up under even the heaviest recoil or the toughest field conditions. Once applied, Posi-Lock locks in your zero and the parallax adjustment insures that you will maintain the clearest sight picture possible.

In working up the proper hunting load to use in Getter, I had the opportunity to try several different bullets and powders. The bullets were 140 gr. Game Kings, 140 gr. Grand Slams, 140 gr. HT Solids, 150 gr. Nosler Partions, 162 gr. Brenneke Tigs and 175 gr. Van Hoffes. For powders I tried H4831, WMRP, Vihtavouri Oy N160 and Scott 4831. After determining which powder worked best with each bullet, I was able to test these combinations by varying the amount of powder to determine which provided the most accurate results. Each loading combination gave it’s own best performance and I was able achieve groups of from 1.25 inches to one ragged hole at 200 yards from a Benchmaster rest. After this extensive load development process I settled on a load that consists of the 140 gr. Game King, 61.5 grs. of N160, Remington brass and Winchester magnum rifle primers. This load later proved to be more than adequate for a one shot kill, the only draw back was the explosive bullet failure that I experienced upon shooting my antelope. Even though this load works well in this firearm, it is not intended as a recommendation for any other firearm. Now back to the hunt.

After we let Pete out in the vicinity of the hill where we had last seen the heart shaped buck at sunset the night before, Dwight and I drove towards the back of the ranch. Our intent was to pursue the heavy horned buck on foot. After stopping just over the ridge line from the buck’s valley of the previous night, we crawled up to the skyline on our hands and knees. After finding a small sage brush to hide behind and break up our outline, we started to glass the antelopes that populated the valley below us. This valley was over a mile wide and two miles long. Even thought there were eight groups of antelopes in the valley, our heavy horned buck was not to be seen. After glassing for thirty minutes, and not finding a buck worth pursuing we decided to try elsewhere.

The rest of the morning was spent glassing up to 50 more bucks and attempting 3 stalks upon as many likely candidates. Unfortunately, two of the candidates proved to be unacceptable after crawling to within 200 yards. The third candidate was at least 14 inches long with 5 or 6 inch prongs. Even though he didn’t have the mass of the my first buck, he was still a respectable specimen. However, it was not to be. After closing the gap between us to 250 yards, I had just settled the cross hairs of the scope on his chest when an unseen doe snorted and off they went. The last we saw of candidate #3 was of his white rump with the hair flaired in the classic danger warning as he left for the next county. Now we were totally frustrated after 3 botched stalks. It was starting to get depressing, what with the sore knees, elbow and bellies. After taking a short rest, we decided to head back and see how Pete had made out.

As we neared the large area near where we had left Pete, we could see his blaze orange safety vest on top of the nearly bald hill top. Through our binoculars we could see that he was laying on his stomach and watching something on the other side of the hill. Suddenly he jumped up and ran down the slope on this side of the hill and started out across the sage brush flat. We decided to leave him alone for a while longer.

After scouting for another hour for a good buck and not having any luck, we headed back to the hill where we had last seen Pete. As we approached from the back side once again, Pete was no where to be seen. After driving around trying to find him, Dwight decided to drive up the gentle back slope of the hill whether than walk. We were looking for Pete as we crested the top of the hill only to discover a huge bowl shaped valley on the other side. Unfortunately, our side of the bowl was a cliff that had a 150-160 foot drop off. As Dwight turned to the left to follow the curve of the cliff I noticed a lone pronghorn buck out in the flat of the valley. It looked huge!

I yelled at Dwight to stop the Suburban, even as I was bailing out of my door with Getter in hand. Dwight had no idea what I had seen but he came around the truck at a gallop with binoculars in hand, to find out. I was looking at the buck through the Burris rifle scope and I asked Dwight, Is he good enough?”, Dwight replied, “He will go at least 15 maybe 15 1/2 inches.” “But is he good enough, I said?”, I still wasn’t too sure of my recently acquired antelope field judging skills. The buck must have heard us because he stopped and looked in our direction. Once Dwight got a clear frontal look at the bucks horns, he almost screamed his answer out, “Shoot him, shoot him and I mean now!”, Since I had kept the cross hairs on his chest during this whole process all I had to do was lightly squeeze Getter’s trigger.

At Getter’s report, I saw the buck hunch up his front shoulders before slowly flipping over on his side as the Game King bullet took him square in the chest, behind the point of the left shoulder. However, I was somewhat mystified by the pink cloud that I saw on the opposite side of the buck. Dwight and I stood up and he slapped me on the back in congratulations.

“Now I am not sure how big he is, because it is hard to field judge a buck from this high up above him, but he has really good mass. But, what I want to know is what in the world did you shoot him with? I have never seen a bullet go through a buck like that before.” When I told Dwight what load I was using, the bullets effect on the buck surprised him

When I made my way down to my buck, I was surprised at how big was. His main length is almost 16 1/2 on each side. The only disappointing aspect of his horns were that his prongs had been broken off slightly in fighting over does. There was even still some hair from an opponent wedged in the cracks of one prong.

On his way to bring the suburban around to where we could load him up, Dwight found Pete. The first thing that Pete said upon seeing my buck was, “Well, you just shot my buck. This is the buck that gave us the show last evening at sunset. I have been tracking him all day but he had slipped by me and was coming back to his territory. Congratulations, he is a really pretty animal.” Pete and Dwight both went on to take 14 1/2 to 14 3/4 inch antelopes later in the hunt.

My shot was 287 steps from the base of the cliff and was during one of the common 15-20 mile an hour cross winds that this area is known for. All in all this was a good hunt and a good way to test equipment.