I'm back from two weeks of chasing around the wilds of northern Wyoming. The deer hunt was super tough this year. Deer numbers were way down. I hunted the same areas in Y2K and saw 4-5 times as many deer as I did this year. I helped a friend of mine who was a first-time western hunter to kill a pretty decent mulie buck. He was a huge bodied mature buck with modest antlers. A 4x5 about 22" wide with good mass. I didn't find a buck I wanted to take. Actually that isn't entirely true. I did find a buck on the third day that I would have loved to have taken. The problem was that WY has added a four point or better antler restriction to this area. The buck in question was a huge bodied mature buck that sported a 3x3 rack that was 28-30" wide. He had G2's that were at least 20" long, long mainbeams and front forks, and excellent mass. He just didn't have any brows or back forks. I studied him from 80 yards with my spotter set on 45x for 20 minutes trying to grow a fourth point anywhere on his rack. I saw several legal bucks, but all of them were youngsters.

I did manage to take my first pronghorn buck. I looked over at least two dozen bucks before stalking and shooting a buck with 13" horns. The season had been open since Oct. 1st in the unit we were hunting and if there were any bigger bucks left I couldn't find them. I really enjoyed hunting speedgoats and plan to see if I can take a better buck next year.

One of the biggest highlights of the trip was getting up close and personal with a Shiras Moose. On the day we left deer camp headed for our antelope area we spotted two moose in a willow marsh alongside the road. There was a family from Wisconsin parked by the road watching a nice bull and a cow feeding about 200 yards out in the marsh. After stopping my truck and digging out the camera I took off across the swamp in an attempt to get closer for a few good pictures. I ended up shooting half a roll of slide film of the bull. Some of the pics being taken as close as 12-15 feet away.

I was shooting slide film and had to send it out for processing. Should take about two weeks. When I get them back I'll post pics of the deer, antelope, and the moose.

One of the biggest lowlights of the trip was killing a 130 class eight point whitetail just east of Peoria Illinois. The reason it was a lowlight was because I killed him at 4AM on I74 with the front end of my truck. This was the first deer I've ever hit with a vehicle. Let me tell you those big corn fed bucks do a lot of damage at 75 mph, about $4,000 to be exact. I had to limp the truck home with a leaking transmission cooler.

Blackhawk357 - I didn't check the board after my initial post about leaving, or I would have called you. While we were hunting antelope we stayed at a motel in Buffalo. How close were we to your place? How is your campaign going? Stopping off at your place without a tag in hand might have broken my heart, especially after striking out on a mulie in Wyoming.

"If you can't change your circumstances then you need to change your perspective."

Edited by - RuRu12 on 10/30/2002 21:04:30