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Two ranches in southwestern New Mexico's prime trophy antelope area combine to provide great chance at record-book animal |
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| This outfitter has done a great job for us since we began working with him more than 15 years ago, and this is one of his best hunts. Operating from two ranches in the top-rated trophy area of southwestern New Mexico, he has been taking three or four hunters per year. Until this year he has had to guide one hunter on one ranch and two on the other, but this year the game department is allowing him to roam freely between the two properties. This land is managed especially to produce outsize pronghorn antelope bucks, and the management program has been paying off handsomely. A hunter has a legitimate chance of putting a buck in the all-time records of the Boone and Crockett Club with most hunters getting a crack at bucks in the 80 to 90 class. In the past the state has allowed only two days to pursue these animals, but this year the season has been extended to a third day.
"This ought to help," the outfitter said, "because before now if you didn't get the buck we were after on Day One, you felt a little pressure to shoot a buck the next day. And sometimes a hunter would want to shoot a buck that we would rather pass on. Now we'll be able to concentrate longer on that special buck." The outfitter said hunters typically see between 50 and 100 antelope a day and four or five of those will be shooters that are in positions where they can be stalked. "We're just not going to shoot a really nice 14 1/2 inch antelope on this hunt," the outfitter said. "We have a hunt in northeastern New Mexico where that is a pretty nice buck, but not down here. We're trying to take superb bucks, and they're on the property. Even with the short two-day season we've had to operate under until now, we still produce at least a 90% success rate on bucks scoring 78 or better, and even a 78 B&C buck here isn't what we're after. We've had several in the high 80s and even three scoring 90 or better. So these are dang sure good ranches. The ranches border each other. The state allocates only six permits on these ranches, which combine to cover 80,000 deeded acres. Three of the permits go to the outfitter, and the other three go to public hunters who must draw their tags and then are allowed to hunt on the ranch. "The reason we get such big bucks down here is partly due to the fact that we're hunting them so lightly," the outfitter said. "But there are some other factors, and one of them has got to be the feed. There's something down here in their feed that really helps them grow big horns. And they don't have the tough winters that sometimes screw with the northeastern pronghorn herds."
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