In April, I was sitting around the house feeling a little sorry about my lack of hunting opportunities the past year when I got a call from Braxton Byers at Huntin’ Fool. He advised that I had won the guided antelope hunt for two in Colorado with outfitter Alex Nestor at Hunt ECO in their Membership Drive. I contacted Alex and made arrangements for our October hunt. My friend, Monte Wooden, would accompany me on this hunt, and we made all the necessary arrangements. Monte was recovering from back surgery, and I had badly sprained an ankle in a horse wreck on a Wyoming elk hunt just before our Colorado antelope hunt. We were two beaten up old guys when we arrived in Limon, Colorado for our hunt.
We met our outfitter, Alex, exchanged our landowner vouchers for tags, and met our two guides, Jordan and Josh. Alex has a number of large ranches on exclusive leases, and our guides were very experienced with the area. We went out scouting the evening before our hunt and located two mature bucks.
On the first hunt day, I returned with Jordan to the area where we had found a nice buck the night before. The buck was with several does and chased off another pretty good buck. We got as close as possible but ran out of cover and terrain at 490 yards. I set up on two shooting sticks that provided a rock steady rest and made the shot with my .270 Win.
Monte had a similar experience with his guide, Josh. He shot a mature buck at 350 yards with his .280 AI. We took photos, cleaned and quartered the bucks, placed them on ice, and returned to town.
This was a very fun hunt for mature antelope on private ranches. Alex has a very good operation, and his guides are very experienced and know the country quite well. This was rolling ranch and agriculture country and quite different from my antelope hunts in the deserts and mountains of California, Nevada, and Wyoming. I hope to return for this hunt in the future and note that Alex also has some very good deer hunting.
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