August 20th, 2021 was the first day of travel for the fall. Tyson and I were headed to South Dakota to chase pronghorn with archery equipment. We were excited. The drive was roughly 13 hours, we left early in the morning so we would get there in the evening with enough time to unpack and familiarize ourselves with the area. In August it is still light outside well into the evening, so we had plenty of time to unpack and scout. Our motel was a cheap place, ran by an older couple I believe. A place that was frozen in time, unaware it was now 2021, and TV’s didn’t have to weigh 50 pounds and lights didn’t have to be a tungsten orange color in every room. The place was perfect for us. When you get out in certain areas of the west, people don’t see people as much. In tern, these people love to talk, and are normally some of the nicest people you can find. There wasn’t much for food or shopping, but everyone in this small town was so accommodating.
We headed out to scout that evening. Quickly finding good groups of pronghorn. That just added to the excitement. Our plan was to focus on water. Neither one of us had any experience hunting pronghorn, so we were going off of the research we did prior. We decided on water and committed to it. Opening morning we set up a blind on the edge of a watering hole that had lots of sign and a large group that was hanging out a few hundred yards away the night before. We get set up and settled in, we watched a few pronghorn work around us hundreds of yards off. We never had anything show any interest in even wanting to come get a drink.
Turns out, we were in a “cold front”. A cold front of 88 degrees instead of 98 degrees. This caused the water needs of the pronghorn to be thrown off of their very regular pattern. So we switched to spot and stalk. This was more fun, but a lot harder. We were putting ourselves in the game a lot more, but it was taking some effort. I don’t remember how many stalks we did on day 1 and 2, but it was a lot. We were gaining lots of knowledge on pronghorn. How well they see, the terrain they prefer, where they bed at certain times of the day, and how fast they can be when spooked. Day 3 was the first day where we had some “success”. We were able to get in range of a good. lone buck. We spotted this buck while watching a different group of bachelor bucks. He was by a fence, and it turns out you can use a fence to sneak pretty dang close to an animal. We had a decoy in front of us. He crossed the fence and without ever taking a glance in our direction, he went straight towards a pond. Behind the decoy, we walked straight at him, basically paralleling him towards the pond. It was a race. Two guys, one with a bow and one with camera gear, racing a lone buck. The buck won, but once he dropped down into the pond, we ran towards the bank. When I say that this buck drank for 8 seconds, I’m not lying. We were 5 seconds from being within super comfortable bow range of this buck. He put his head up above the bank and looked over at us, still behind the decoy. I turned the camera on, Tyson ranged the buck and drew back. The buck took a few more steps back and an arrow flew. It went high.
Bummed out, exhausted, tired, we did a loop and made our way back to the truck. The next few days were long. Tyson ended up missing a few more bucks that I did not get on camera. The trip came to an end when Tyson took off on a done deal stalk. I dropped him off so that I could move the truck out of the view of the bucks. I watched as he disappeared over a hill. These bucks were actually headed right for the water hole that we sat over the first morning. Ironic. It was 20 minutes r so and Tyson emerged back over the hill and I picked him up. It was obvious something went wrong. When he got within 60 yards of the bucks, he realized he lost his release somewhere along the stalk. With no other option, the bucks got a pass. This was the final stalk of the trip. We had to be back in town the next day and had no choice but to head back. We learned so much on that trip and had so much fun. The best part was, we knew that was just the beginning.
