Like a prison guard, the antelope decoy stood watch outside my ground blind.

Our guide, John, helps fellow writer Bob Humphrey set up a Primos Double Bull blind overlooking a mule deer trail leading to the water tank in the background. Several deer walked by Bob that evening, but no mature bucks.

Inside, I was struggling. Within the hour, my guide, John, would be driving by, looking for a signal. I had to make up my mind — stick it out in the blind or switch to a riverbottom treestand for the evening. Deciding whether to pursue antelope, whitetails, mule deer, or even elk is the cross you bear when hunting Montana’s Powder River.

When the blue Suburban drove slowly into view, I stuck my arm outside the blind and started waving. I was ready to switch species.

Then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and nearly tore the skin off my hand pulling it back inside. A doe and her fawn had just stepped over a low dike into my field, and right behind them was a huge pronghorn buck.

It now made sense why John was driving so slowly in my direction. He and hunting buddy Bob Humphrey had been shadowing the buck, glassing him from the road. As the buck chased the doe toward the road, Bob and John bailed out of the vehicle and started sneaking along a dike to intercept the buck.

I sat there, in prison, under guard, watching the events unfold. When John tipped up a Montana Decoy 60 yards from the buck, I thought Bob was going to get a shot. Instead, as the buck stared at the decoy, the doe took off running — toward me!

I dropped to my knees, grabbed my bow, and reached for my rangefinder.

The doe must have decided she had enough bucks in her life at the moment and detoured around my decoy. The monster buck, now in hot pursuit, flew by, offering only a passing glance at my statuesque prison guard.

I snatched up my camera and captured images of the chase, marveling at the pronghorns’ incredible speed. The buck suddenly slammed on the brakes and, from within the cloud of dust, glared menacingly at my decoy. I swapped camera for bow, but it was in vain. The doe was wearing Eau de Estrus, and the buck wasn’t about to let her get away.

Through the telephoto lens, I noticed the buck had an odd horn on the right side with two prongs — one jutting forward, the other backward. The mass was exceptional.

The doe still had gas in the tank and took off at full throttle, but the buck stayed inches behind, as if drafting her. They ran out of alfalfa and dropped into a field of yellow prairie grass where several other does and fawns were moseying around.

That’s when I lost it. It was time to break out of prison!

Grabbing my bow and rangefinder, I zipped open the blind and sprinted (if you can call running bent over a sprint) across the wide-open alfalfa.

I was free! This was a “non-TV” hunt, which meant I didn’t have a cameraman strapped to my back. I was alone, on the run, attempting to make something happen with the odds against me — and loving every second of it.

Just before reaching the edge of the alfalfa, I dropped to my hands and knees and somehow crawled to the grass undetected.

Getting to a high vantage point to glass well before daylight is a good strategy. Stay behind your glass, study the deer movements, and then plan your strategy.

The buck was seriously distracted, and the other half-dozen pronghorns were busy watching the pursuit, when the doe led the buck very close. I struggled to get my rangefinder to shoot through the tall grass and finally got a reading of 32 yards, but the buck wouldn’t stand still, forcing me to be patient. When the doe began to lead the buck away — my rangefinder now reading 51 yards — I had to make a decision.

My bow was the fastest I’d ever shot, zipping a 355-grain arrow through my chronograph at 326 fps. It was designed for such situations. I drew, rose above the grass, held my 50-yard pin a little high on the buck, and touched it off.

Now, I have to come clean here. My arrow hit forward of the shoulder. Still, the buck was bleeding heavily as he walked slowly over a hill, leaving the doe behind. I backed off and met up with John and Bob. Deciding to give the buck some time, we drove Bob to his whitetail stand in the riverbottom. Then John and I returned to take up the search.

It didn’t take long to relocate the buck, now bedded in some prairie grass. With a strong wind blowing, I elected to stalk in for a finishing shot. After spending an hour belly-crawling through grass, up and over a dike, and across a dry creek bed, I closed the distance to 41 yards.

I don’t know if the buck sensed I was there or just needed to get up and move. Whatever the case, he struggled to his feet, and as he looked the other way, I quickly drew and redeemed my first shot by slipping the second arrow through his ribcage.

With horns over 15 inches long and circumferences at the bases measuring an amazing eight inches, he was my best pronghorn ever!

After an extensive photo session, we returned to camp, where Bob told us he’d had a big whitetail close but could not get a shot. Hunting buddy Tim Herald had taken a nice pronghorn buck to go with the whitetail buck he’d killed the first day. And the final member of our party, C.J. Davis, had shot a good 4×4 whitetail that evening to match the pronghorn he’d arrowed the previous afternoon. This was quite the place!

Tim and C.J. were done, but Bob and I were not. A deer tag was burning a hole in my pocket, and I wanted to focus on mule deer for the remaining two days of the hunt. The next morning, I played chess with several mule deer bucks as they filtered off the alfalfa fields and into the hills. Despite my sly moves to ambush the bucks, the deer won the game. Muleys are good at chess.

That evening was gorgeous, the kind that makes you ponder your blessings. As I sat on a hill, soaking it all in, a whitetail doe and her fawn bedded in the grass below me, and a good whitetail buck made soft splashing noises as he waded the rive
r toward the setting sun. I hiked out to the truck wearing the kind of smile only a hunter can appreciate.

The last day, however, I was back in serious predator mode. The beautiful sunsets and pretty little fawns were a memory. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Here’s the buck chasing his doe past my decoy, then across the alfalfa field and into some prairie grass. That’s when I broke free of the blind and made my move.

Knowing I’d likely be working up a sweat — last days are like that — I dressed for battle and loaded up my pack. Then John, Bob, C.J., and I drove to a nearby property, where we would spend the morning glassing for muleys. If we were unsuccessful, Bob would hunt a waterhole during the heat of the day, and C.J would go with him for support.

Daylight revealed exactly what we expected — Big Sky Country and mule deer traveling from agricultural fields up into the rougher draws and hills to bed down. Two particular bucks — a wide 3×3 and a large 4×4 — broke from a group of a dozen deer and headed up a ridge on their own. They had ignored a cardinal rule — safety in numbers. That was the mistake I was hoping for.

As they slipped over the ridge out of sight, we drove around and glassed the opposite side from three-quarters of a mile away. Through spotting scopes, we soon relocated them.

With time running out, Bob was anxious to get to his antelope blind, so I decided to strike off on my own.

“John, let me out. I’m going after those bucks.”

“Okay, I’ll take these guys to their blind. It’s several miles from here, but you can call when you want me to pick you up,” John said.

Free again! With a spring in my step, I struck out across the undulating prairie, keeping a large hill between me and the grazing bucks. It was a long hike, but after worming my way to the top of the ridge, I used a rock outcropping as cover to glass for the bucks. With full bellies, they were moseying downhill into some sage just above a 20-foot-deep draw. That’s when the smaller buck made another, more serious mistake. He bedded with the wind in his face and his back to the draw. Rookie!

If I could keep from getting spotted by the larger buck, bedded just above the careless one, the stalk would be easy. Both were bedded in sage that partially obscured their vision, so I quickly belly-crawled 50 yards across an open stretch of short grass and dropped into the draw. A decent breeze covered my advance, and I was able to get so close, the lip of the draw obscured the buck. I backed off until my rangefinder read 21 yards, nocked an arrow, and waited.

Because this buck was just average, I ran out of patience waiting for him to stand up. Had he been a monster, I’d have settled in and waited for him to stand, stretch, and offer me a shot.

Plus, the stalk had taken a couple of hours, and John was probably wondering what I was up to. So, after 20 minutes of waiting, I came to full draw, aimed at the spot where the buck would be when he stood, and made a smooching noise with my lips. The buck stood and gave me a look that said “Uh-oh!” just as the top pin settled on his ribs. The arrow took him through both lungs the instant he tore off at Warp 3. With two massive holes through his rib cage, the buck ran out of gas and tumbled to the bottom of the draw.

As I called John from the top of a hill, I felt a satisfying sense of accomplishment. It had been a great hunt on the Powder River. The sky was big, the bucks were fast, and the bows faster.

In life, aggressiveness can land you in prison.

In bowhunting, it’ll get you out.

My best pronghorn antelope (left) ever, by far! With horns over 15 inches long and bases of 8 inches in circumference, this buck approached a score of 80! This “rookie” mule deer (right) buck bedded in a really bad spot — for him.

Author’s Notes: I took my 80-inch pronghorn with a PSE X-Force at 70 lbs., Carbon Force Radial X Weave 200 arrows, and Ripcord arrow rest. For the mule deer, I used a 70-lb. BowTech Guardian, Easton Axis arrows, Trophy Taker Xtreme FC rest, and seven-pin sight. For both animals, my broadheads were Rage 2-Blade. All my optics were Nikon, and my clothing was almost exclusively Under Armour in Mossy Oak camo.

Powder River Outfitters operates on thousands of acres of land on both sides of the game-rich Powder River in southeast Montana. For more information, contact: Doug Gardner (406) 427-5721; Ken Greslin (406) 436-2538; www.powder-river-outfitters.com.