Antelope hunting means long days in blazing sun, miles behind the glass, and can mean crawling through cactus and sagebrush. Being physically ready and having the right gear makes the hunt enjoyable instead of miserable. 1. Protect Yourself During the Stalk Knee and Elbow Pads: The final push often means crawling hundreds of yards over jagged rock and prickly pear. …

Success on opening mornings is usually bought and paid for weeks in advance. Glassing and spotting terrain patterns are your absolute best tools when preparing for an antelope hunt. 1. Start with Smart E-Scouting Before putting boots on the ground, fire up your mapping software — the onX Hunt app is one of the absolute best tools you can use …

When you’re chasing pronghorn across open prairie, you rarely get a second chance or a close shot. At Hancock Outdoors, I always tell folks that dialing in your rifle setup before you head out is the difference between a clean harvest and driving home empty-handed. 1. Match Your Round to the Wind & Check Local Laws Many hunters successfully take …

When you’re hunting the wide-open flats, getting within ethical shooting range of a mature pronghorn buck can feel nearly impossible. They have vision equivalent to 8x binoculars and a radar-sharp sense of danger. But as the season progresses and the rut kicks into high gear, dominant bucks develop a major weakness: extreme jealousy. To pull a trophy buck out of …

Every hunter has misjudged a stalk. The difference is what you do next. On one hunt, a stalk that was supposed to close the distance on a trophy buck went sideways — badly. By the time the mistake was clear, the buck was still more than 500 yards out. Far too distant for a shot, and seemingly too far gone …

Some of the best proof of how antelope actually behave doesn’t come from a hunt at all — it comes from just watching them. One fall during the rut, two territorial bucks faced off along a stretch of barbwire fence splitting their ranges — separated by a two-lane highway. Antelopes aren’t stopped by a standard four-strand barbwire fence; they’ll duck …

Pronghorn antelope aren’t silent animals. They communicate constantly with each other through a set of distinct vocalizations — and once you learn to recognize and reproduce them, you have a real tool for closing the distance on a wary buck. 1. The Short SnortThis is a buck’s way of announcing his presence. Watch a mature buck long enough on open …

Pronghorn antelope season is just a month away, and these sharp-eyed speedsters are already challenging hunters across the western plains. Unlike hunting mule deer or elk, pronghorn hunting often calls for a high-visibility approach — dominant bucks are intensely territorial during the rut and understanding how to use that instinct against them is the key to tagging a trophy this …