Just finished up my antelope hunt in south central Oregon. My youngest son and I both drew tags. Kind of a crazy hunt. My two youngest sons came out here a couple of weeks ago to scout and set up a blind on a good waterhole. Every place they checked there was already a blind set up, several days before they could be legally placed. They finally found a seep with a little water and no blind but not a lot of antelope activity either. The first morning we watched a line of antelope track off towards a nearby waterhole and leave one member shy of the original number. Meanwhile one of my sons was scouring the area for a new waterhole. He finally found one and called us to let us know. We broke down the blind, packed all our gear and headed for the new location. Both of my sons headed back to our original camp to relocate it closer to the new blind site. While I was sitting, I looked of the blind window and there was another hunter coming down the hill to set up there. He saw our blind and his face fell. Mumbled sorry, and headed off back the way he came. No action that afternoon. The next morning found us in the blind 1/2 hour before first light. Around 8-9:00 in the morning a lone buck came in. He was terrible spooky and never came in to the water. A little later I had a call of nature. My son suggested that I go out through the window to avoid zipper noise. Sounded like a good idea at the time. I got my left leg and body through ok and then caught my right foot on the edge of the window and took a header off of a 14” rock shelf down onto a lumpy pan of more lava rock. All of my 62 year old, 210 lb carcass landed flat on my left arm. I got up, determined nothing was broken but could barely move my arm. After 1/2 hour or so the arm was working but my left wrist was extremely painful trying to draw my bow. Shortly after this occurrence a group of antelope charged in and dove into the water. I got set up, drew through the agony of my wrist, released, heard a gosh awful sound as my upper limb hit the top of the blind and sent arrow a foot over the buck’s back at 18 yards. OOPS! We accessed the situation and rotated the blind about 30 degrees to allow shooting through a smaller but lower window. No more activity that day. The next morning my wrist felt a lot better and I could draw without pain. A couple of does came in fairly early and my son was set up. He was adamant about shooting a buck whereas I didn’t care. He let them pass. Around 2:30 in the afternoon two more does showed up and started drinking. I was set up this time. I drew, aimed, released, and,,,,, redemption!
Topic: Oregon antelope (Read 5832 times)
