Mission Antelope

Limited resource+limited access=about 5-10% success rate for the Kansas archery antelope hunter. Although blind hunting may increase your odds...(probably not this year with the abundance of water)...and  is a tactic very common and a great way to shoot a pronghorn in the early season pre-rut hunt and even in the height of the rut, it may also be the economical way because in order to locate KS pronghorn you will need to put on the miles with no guarantee of access. The expense of a trip to Wyoming vs a trip to western KS may be a wash. You'll need a few things for KS pronghorn if you choose to hunt from your belly: Gas, maps, luck, gas, and luck.

I was accompanied by my good friend Kent on our scouting trip to locate some goats for the KS early archery season, but today I got a bonus. Kent's son Dalton tagged along. To give you an idea of the driving involved, Dalton was able to get all his AR reading done for the week along with a nap or two as the distance was great and the goats were sparse at best.

Cooped up in the truck all day you get plenty of time to chat. Kent was throwing out some opinions about the Kansas antelope hunt and one statement Kent made that puts things in perspective was "man, if you shoot a goat in Kansas, someone outta get your name put on a plaque and it should go up on a wall somewhere."

It may be an easy assumption that with the increasing popularity of Heads Up Decoy that leasing and or booked hunts would be on the agenda especially in an effort to boost our marketing prowess, but at this point I still prefer to measure my successes and failures under the same conditions as everyone else. I do not place judgement on those that do, it mostly boils down for me to a simple fact that in the grand scope of archery hunting, I am not very accomplished. When the time comes to look back I will feel good about what I've done or not done. So, I look forward to the struggles of a late September Kansas archery antelope hunt with my good friend Kent and his son Dalton. Let's hope they are responding to the decoy and we get an opportunity. Antelope are a beautiful animal and a ton of fun to hunt. I will be optimistic and with some good fortune maybe one of us will slide an arrow through this big boy pictured below. Hunting season has started for many...I wish you all the best of luck. Have a safe and exciting 2011 archery season.