May Family Enjoys A Successful Antelope Hunt

By STEPHANIE BUNKER

The Progress

The antelope hunt commenced on August 22 which brought the May family into Railroad Valley to fill Autumn May’s Area 13 tag.

The group went up to hunting camp the day before the hunt began and did some looking around.
“On Saturday before the hunt started we saw a really nice one,” Autumn recounted. “I saw it again on Sunday, so I took a couple shots at it and missed him.”

After missing that one, the party did more searching over the next few days.

The hunting group included Autumn’s husband Kirby, their 2-year-old daughter Kaisley, father-in-law Kevin May, and Kirby’s siblings Kolby, Kenyon, and Gracie. They went to get permission from a farmer to hunt on his fields in the area.

“He didn’t have enough land for a landowners tag and he gave us permission to hunt there,” Autumn said.

On Tuesday August 24 the group glassed some antelope in the farmer’s field. One antelope in particular caught Autumn’s eye.

But while they were looking them over, another hunting outfit was looking at them too. The Mays were afraid that group would get permission to hunt there as well and take out that nice buck that Autumn had her hopes on.

Autumn had her reservations about pulling the trigger after missing the other antelope a few days prior.
“Kirby said do it now or it might not be here later,” she recounted.

So with the threat of the other hunter group, Autumn went ahead and got ready to shoot. Two hundreds yards away she laid in the field and set up for the shot.

“After the first shot it sat there and walked around and then fell, “ Autumn said. Then I took another shot at it, so I knew he was done.”

Autumn had heard other hunters tell about a term called “ground shrinkage” where the animal looks a lot bigger when the hunter shoots it than it does by the time they walk up to it on the ground. She was afraid of experiencing this phenomenon when she got closer to the antelope.

“There were several other bucks walking around the one I wanted so I had to make sure it was alone, but I was afraid I shot at the wrong one,” she said.

To her delight, though, she didn’t have it mixed up and she walked up to a nice antelope buck on the ground. The buck measured 81 ¼ inches, this satisfied Autumn’s competitive nature in finding a larger buck than her husband.

Autumn had never been antelope hunting before. “It was a different kind of hunting experience,” she said. “It was more driving around than hiking. But it was nice that we could do that with my 2-year-old daughter coming along.”

Autumn told about the joys of watching her daughter pretend to look through the binoculars and finding some antelope. They are getting her ready to be the next generation hunter.