First antelope success
 

Well this hunt happend over three months ago sorry for the long delay just had an extremley busy fall.
Anyway we hunted the far north west corner of SD harding county during second season. We drove a half mile into our zone and saw 3 antelope in a pasture. We went to the ranch and asked for permission after a request to shoot all of them we set out on our stalk.
We were able to get the buck the first day within 45 min of enteringg our hunting zone and then we got the doe and fawn the next day.
We got one more fawn on public land.
i had shots at two more buck but wind played a factor on one and just shooter error on the other both clean misses.
All in all this was the best hunt of my life I have never hunted any western big game and it was awesome. it was also my first rifel hunt as I bowhunt mainly and muzzleloader the rest of the time. i am now hooked on the rifle and am now getting into reloading and long range shooting.
thanks for looking.

glad someone got a goat...

We were holding out for bigguns, and went home with nada.

We were also hunting late in the season though, pretty well picked over by then I think.

Congrats on the success. We western hunters are kind of spoiled. And now you know why!

Congratulations. The big downside of antelope hunting for me is how quickly its all over. Including myself I took five guys out, one day at a time. At least that way I got to be out spotting for more than the first morning.

Howler - I'm so spoiled its sick.

how do antelope taste?

Like chicken..............kidding.

To be honest they taste alot like what they eat. Mine all come from family farm land and taste excellent. They eat winter wheat, corn and milo all year. The ones I have eaten that were taken from the sagebrush taste like you would think soured sagebrush might taste.

To get the very best meat, IMO this is what it takes.

Shoot a younger animal and forget trophies. Preferrably a small buck that grew up closest to farmland. Inviscerate it immediately and cool as quickly as possible. Remove the hide and make sure the meat is as clean as possible. Do not let any of the entrails contact the meat. Wash out carcass and cut/wrap/freeze asap.

Really good antelope will be similar to whitetail deer and maybe slightly less game taste. Grilled rare is my preference.

By far the best tasting wild game we have ever had. The buck we only saved the loin and the rest went to sausage meat the doe and fawns we saved all cuts and triming meat went to sausage. We did gut right away however we did not skin right away. We actually had temps right at freezing during our four day trip and went and found a tree along a creek and pulled them all up in it then on the last day had butcher party and cleaned them all and put into trash bags until we got home then rewraped and froze. Also ours eat sage brush there was no crops for miles and ours tasted amazing. the most tender meat I have ever eaten.

Way to go! I did not get a archery shot at anything I wanted on the wall this year. Got to love them goats.

This year was my first for antelope and my lesson was that pretty much all farmers/ranchers HATE antelope. Property owners who won't give you the time of day if you want to hunt deer will give permission to shoot antelope to complete strangers and ask them to bring friends.

The area we went is not known to be particularly friendly to out-of-staters, and we had a guy pull up and ask what we were hunting (I think he was just making sure we weren't going to trespass on his property across the road from state land). Once he found out we were after antelope and not deer we had instant permission on a few thousand acres.

Congrats on your antelope. I too love to hunt Antelope.