EP 23: Hunting Giant Antelope with Tony Grimmett

and then we start doing the breakdown because of the ear size the face size and the eye size who knows those kind of statistics that's crazy how do you break down score in terms of what matters more anything to do with western big game welcome to the epic outdoors podcast powered by under armor hey everybody jason carter here and adam bronson as well uh with epic outdoors another episode of the epic outdoors podcast uh we're here with a super cool guest uh tony grimman of pronghorn guide service uh one of the most world-renowned uh outfitters for antelope and and antelope killers but before we get to cranking with with tony do you want to thank under armor for sponsoring this podcast um uh they're just super good dudes been in the field with the executives there at under armor they're good hunters and uh and are in the field with us doing exactly what we're talking about so

anyway we do appreciate them but here at epic outdoors we also book hunts we're a full-blown booking agency of course we specialize in western big game animals alaska canada mexico we deal deal with some whitetail hunts here and there um you know anything that's awesome and big we're interested in uh so we deal with the guys in kansas and iowa um and different things as well so it's that time of year that a lot of the draw results are coming out and if you're left with nothing or not enough in your schedule uh that you'd like give us a call let us know the season dates you may be looking for uh filling a gap in or the species and we'll get to work or immediately give you an opportunity right there on the phone outfit you might want to call and talk with book a hunt fill up your schedule yeah we've got a full-time booking agent jeff john two first names he's my

brother-in-law super good guy super personable loves to talk hunting he's dealing with our outfitters on a 24-hour seven-day-a-week type basis and uh helps adam and i stay on top of the openings that we've got available so you can call in and visit any of us but uh jeff's a super good guy and that's his main responsibility so anything you need help with as far as uh looking for a hunt with guaranteed tags or even if you drew a tag jeff adam or i can definitely help you and so give us a holler it's 435-263-0777 or hit us up on the web epicoutdoors.com you there tony yeah i'm here awesome uh well uh i've been looking forward to this podcast um you're one of those guys that you know adam and i and as well as many of the listeners can learn a lot from and and antelope are uh some of the toughest critters to judge

and and uh you know just know exactly what you're getting into when you're hunting antelope i know they're you know seem somewhat easy on the surface to hunt and whatnot but but to trophy hunt them is a whole different ball game so anyway maybe right before we get started just talk to us a little bit about your background how you got into hunting and then how you got addicted to antelope well uh you know i started hunting antelope when i was uh a young man i think i was in my 20s and uh happened to draw a unit 18a tag uh gosh i can't remember the year probably 84 or 80 somewhere in there and uh just 20 20 20 years past the day you were born yeah well it was longer than that i think i was 24 20 25 something like that so early early 80s i just fell in love with them yeah just the beauty of them and i started to learn about you know the fact that

their their their lungs and their heart you know is bigger than an elk's and their the tensile strength on their bones are like 10 times the strength of an elk's bone come on how do you know this stuff like who knows those kind of statistics that's crazy we got the right guy to talk about two points today on the phone well i i i started uh i helped the guy with a book out of lander wyoming he started calling me early on and uh you know picking my brain about stuff i knew about antelope down here while he was telling me about antelope up there but through all the different biologists that i ran into over the years uh that's the stuff that they were telling me that makes them so unique that's crazy and the fact that they're they they've you know been around longer than any other animal north america pretty

much on the planet and uh you know they're unique to their own there's no other species that's related so so you uh you end up drawing a tag what were you doing for a living you know at 24 years old back then well i was a police officer for phoenix at that time uh you know i did that for uh six years and i i got out on a medical retirement so yeah i kind of started doing this after that and uh you know that was back in 1980 so wow so you're obviously if you're if you have any tendency to be interested in antelope you you're in the right state at least being from arizona i mean that's a good place to start start getting after it well it's it's hard to get a tag here but yeah it's it's a great state for for big antelope that's for sure so were you uh did you hunt like did you grow up hunting 16 17 18

years old grew up hunting deer elk other species or how did how'd you get started yeah i pretty much hunted all those you know i was originally from mississippi and uh my dad was from there also grew up hunting and fishing being a farmer and uh he kind of got me into the you know dying to go deer hunting every year and yeah you know and uh started when i was a young boy so well that's great and so once you uh drew this antelope tag i mean what did you kill how did it kind of tell us about that and then when did you start guiding well i you know i just obviously i scouted a ton because uh through friends and stuff they said you know the key in hunting is it's the scout guys that don't scout you know just get lucky so i took that to heart and and scouted uh pretty much every day off i had

and uh found a big buck and just kind of kept tabs on them and ended up uh taking them opening day no way so what what did he end up going or what he was 17 with six inch prongs and uh you know he was he was a big boy i think he scored uh right at that 82 number yeah so you started off hunting book book antelope and never looked back basically yeah yeah and he taught me that you know you needed mass because he was he was pretty thin and and i found out real quick how important mass was on antelope well yeah well no leading right into that i guess you know like jason alluded big antelope or are hard to judge for a lot of people you're you know we're used to deer and elk and all that things that tower at two feet three feet five feet above their heads and that's not the case with uh with antelope so let's maybe get into that a little bit you know maybe maybe first off though and maybe

that'll get into us about how to judge antelope because i know there's some differences state to state but where do you i mean you're from arizona but where is your favorite place to hunt big antelope i'd imagine arizona's got to be towards the top oh yeah it's uh you know actually uh we work out of new mexico and wyoming and arizona and we live here in arizona and uh we do the fewest hunts here because you have to draw a tag and uh the draw is tough so you know with that being said probably new mexico and wyoming makes it much easier so it the older i get the more enjoyable those two states have become for me and so you're doing a lot of like landowner tags in new mexico and other bid tag work and then in wyoming it's just a little easier to draw more tags available correct correct and uh you know it's kind of an untapped source uh there's just as big a heads up

there it seems as anywhere except for the the absolute giants seem to come out of arizona nevada and in new mexico and you know but for that mid-range uh mid 80s type of buck uh wyoming's just got bunches it has a lot wow that's awesome well um so uh as we get started here i just i do want to just talk a little bit about i know you said one time you like mule deer or mule deer hunting i mean do you guide any other species or are you just pretty much really on the antelope well we have guided a couple of uh ibex tag hunters in new mexico but uh that's it uh and that was simply you know clients that had bought that tag and uh wanted to hunt them and then my daughter got fortunate enough to draw an ibex tag which is one in a million so you know it was uh it was a blast and we've killed a couple of giant ibex over

there but other than that no we we're pretty much 100 percent antelope uh it just uh you know it takes up pretty much my whole year so they never get they never get boring to you i mean you've got to kill and guided hundreds and hundreds i don't know lots seven seven hundred and one come on is that are you rounding or is that exact does that include road kills or is that just regular 701 hunts today six six hundred and fifty six kills wow 478 of them were over 82 b and c come on 478 net or many net or gross that's net book books over when i talk b and c i talk net and when i talk sci obviously it's gross so you just uh they pretty much need the the tony grim at record book i mean that's pretty much that's your section that antelope section is your section well when i started back in the mid 80s i i that was my goal i wanted to rewrite the record books you really that was

it didn't just started to kill yeah i wanted to kill the world record and i wanted to uh you know we literally dominated some of the counties like soquero county was unheard of in new mexico back in the early 80s and and now it's number one yeah for for numbers of b and c bucks and uh you know i think there's one county in wyoming that's ahead of it but uh you know we're in there too now so well that's that's aggressive and you know we've we've known you as the antelope guru obviously there's nobody that i know of i'm pretty sure anybody knows of that just does antelope um and specializes in it and you uh i know and your son eli have that reputation as being being it and you know whether it be draw tags or you know other methods you're the you're the turn two guys so to speak to find a giant and if there's one to be found in a unit you're probably going to turn one up but

that maybe leads us to yeah let's talk about that and you know antelope you know they're maybe not the hardest hardest to find uh you know they they live in fairly open country in some regards and obviously interspersed timber country and other parts of different units but they always chase my truck they always chase they want to try to run you down yeah they want to race you every time but well they do yeah sometimes you can just start driving a little faster and they gravitate toward your vehicle they they want they want on the other side of the road yeah and they want to cut you off but you know they love to run they love a good run and uh if they think you're going to beat them somewhere regardless of what you're doing uh in their mind they've got to beat you you gotta find another

gear that's right yeah exactly so let's i guess starting from the first when you're obviously covering as many antelope as you can and bucks as you can is part of it but when you when you start breaking down a big buck let's start talking about what you really how to judge an antelope because there's a lot of different ways to 82 or to maybe 85 i mean 90 you start talking about those giants they've got to have a bit of everything you can't just have height and a little bit of prong you've got to have the mass to go with it but but what do you what do you look for you know what are some of your or how do you break down score in terms of what matters more i know a sheep it's you know 60 40 mass and length things like that what do you look for well you know first off you probably need to know what what they have in

your area in other words if if you're hunting a state that you're not familiar with or an area you're not familiar with you need to head to the local taxidermist and start looking at ear size and face size and body size because it changes in every region uh which i found out the hard way 30 years ago but it it's uh you know you just you have to do your your homework or it's not going to work um once that's done uh because i did a seminar the first arizona found the antelope foundation seminar on judging and i held up two ears mounted ears that were cut off obviously so i could have them at the at the banquet and one was eight and a quarter inches long out of new mexico and the other was five and a quarter inches long out of north new mexico both both mature bucks or whatever yeah yeah both one was an 83 inch buck and one was uh the sci world record so you know uh had that five inch ear

been on the sci world record he had probably looked 120 yeah but uh you know he was 99 7 and uh still look giant but in you know i mean there's you've got to go by something and if ears is what you're going by you need to know the size of the years and why why is that break that down for us like when you're looking at the year obviously you're you're judging height and prong and whatnot but tell us tell us exactly what's going through your mind on comparing the air well you know if you've got an ear size in your your head in your area then you can virtually lay the air along the horn and come up with you know a reasonable length that you're not going to be off by a lot but if you start you know if the buck's got five inch ears five and a half and you're thinking seven well you're going to think he's a lot longer than he is so that you know you have to have something to go by whether

it be the width of the eye the length of the face once you have a reference point you know then you can start to begin to to judge the antelope on you know his mass how high his prong is how long his prong is off the horn just these various things and uh you know um you know we did a field judging video back in 02 that uh you know we've gotten great response from and and people are still using it i mean it's very down to earth and basic but it works so when you when you uh talk about you know ear size head size and that area to area and you've identified i think it was northeastern new mexico is having small eared antelope i mean is is in that area or 80 percent of the bucks all small eared and or all of them and and in other parts of the country very rare like to ever find a midget five and a half

inch eared antelope um you know somewhere there's a cutoff line in new mexico going north to south and and it varies you know in different areas going east to west but the north basically has these smaller faces uh smaller bodies they're probably 30 pounds on the hoof smaller and they're you know we've seen faces as short as seven inches from eye to nose is that what you're talking about you know from from the tear duct to the end of the end of the face and uh you know we've seen them as large as uh eight six so you know that's an inch and six eight doesn't seem like a lot but when you put all the other proportions in that that's huge yeah so when you're looking when you're judging you'll take like an ear size do the math then might you might look at the face as well do the math like you're saying the the eye do the math um i mean so if two or three of those add up then you're

like okay i'm relatively certain that's a 17 and a half inch goat or or whatever is that how it's going down yeah for for instance you know just an overall look because of the experience i have you know we'll look at a buck and my son and i or dave and i my other guide um and we'll look at it and think okay wow that looks like what we're looking for say we're scouting for the governor's tag or you know a premier tag and and we go wow that's a 90 incher and then we start doing the breakdown because of the ear size the face size and the eye size which we know should be a certain number and we go wow i'm only coming up with 86 or 7 when we do it that way so you got to go by your breakdown you can't just wow overall look boom he's awesome and if you know if you're going to put him on the wall and it's your buck and he's awesome what else you want that's right for most people that's probably

fine but if you're really scrutinizing something what you're saying about really comes into play and when you moved from that part of new mexico over to say arizona or up to wyoming where would your where do you find average maybe there's some variation but i don't imagine there's variation from five and a half to eight and a half within in arizona or wyoming is it just that region of new mexico that seems to be the smaller stuff yeah i i think so i mean there's uh for the most part at the arizona bucks are are uh lighter in weight and uh you know they're they just a rule of thumb most bucks will have a six and a half to seven inch year and uh you know and that's from the center of the ear but to the tip of the ear and you know and and most bucks will have a seven and a half to eight eight inch face we say you know point blank average is about seven seven and you know

the ear is about six five six six you know that's that's kind of the rule of thumb that we're using for most bucks that's why wyoming or arizona or wyoming or arizona yeah colorado utah you know just a general antelope correct and you know you'll see you'll see charts uh uh top of the top of the shoulder to the brisket you'll see charts of 12 inches for an antelope well that's a that's a real skinny antelope uh we use more 14 to 16 and in wyoming they're even thicker than that a lot of times even in new mexico we've killed the bucks that have hit the ground and been 19 inches from brisket to the top of the shoulder yeah and clearly it was a monster buck and it was you know the new state record at the time but uh you know they they obviously vary quite a bit from region to region um we've had guys say

well geez this buck down here you know i can pick up with one hand and throw it over my shoulder that's how small he was like a coyote yeah so i'm sure he was exaggerating but i've run into the same type of stuff do you generally find that the bigger the body the bigger the horn i mean down in uh like sonora you'll find these you know bucks with you know mule deer small bodies and they still have some you know big antler on top i mean is so you do have those you know odd situations but i mean generally speaking the bigger the body the bigger the buck well actually no that's that's usually not the case uh in 2011 and 13 we killed two of the biggest bucks ever killed in new mexico and and both of their bodies of course you know they were governor's tags so their hair was terrible in august

and uh you know they literally weighed 90 pounds on the hoof they were it was like their heads necks were gonna break watching them walk around the heads were so big the horns that's crazy so not always and and it and and because it was a drought is probably why they were so large because when they were fawns they obviously had good wet years so they their start was good then when they hit their drought in their prime at four years old uh it didn't it didn't matter at that point because the drought forces them to eat stuff with a lot of protein yeah let's talk about that like like so i you and i've talked a little bit on the phone about that i mean and and of course people have their own theory for elk and deer but but for antelope you're finding those dry years produce the the best bucks or the best grow

the absolute largest bucks yeah are typically on drought years and it's because of what they eat uh you know when it's when it's nothing but a dirt field typically the uh the chemise grows which is a type of sagebrush and the winter fat grass uh grows and they are very high 30 plus percent in protein where you know they're they're similar to us on lush years they'll eat stuff they like and it's seven or eight percent protein kind of like we do we eat stuff we like it's not good for us popcorn yeah chips whatever yeah you got it so but uh i you know from what i've been able to learn from ranchers and and biologists uh this is kind of where we're pointing to be that that factor of growth and uh uh and the hotter you know it it's something to do with the heat they have uh you know my son has come up with a theory about the the horns and the glands and the way the horns grow the hotter it is

it helps the horn growth for some reason and i haven't quite understood what he's saying but but i think it's maybe on to some well whatever you guys are doing collectively it's working so whatever theories you go with year to year it's paying off but one thing you said a minute ago you know got me thinking about sheep i spend a lot of time sheep hunting and you said something about the start of these bucks when they were fawns or yearlings whatnot and and i know with with bighorns both rocky and deserts and i guess more so maybe with some of the desert that are in areas that are very hostile you know two to five inches of moisture a year you know is it and those those starts from a yearling to three-year-old rams will allow their base size to get big during that period of time and once they get big they

don't ever go small you know you never have a ram that's you know goes from 12 and then goes back smaller once they're big they're big and they stay bigger antelope you know they're a little bit more unique because sheep have horns that keep growing throughout their life and antelope obviously shed them but is that bone core underneath is that what you're talking about about the starts that it gets bigger young well yeah exactly it uh even though they shed every year they're gonna be where from all our video and photos that we do every year we can tell from year to year that that a buck has changed drastically but yet he's still in our brains they he looks you know we know who he is where sometimes they don't change much at all and and that's a lot of that's dna and gene pool and and areas they live in and the type of growth they have some of them are completely smooth horned and

other ones have bumps and knots all over them yeah cheaters some of them aren't two points yeah cheaters yeah exactly and uh a lot of people call them oh i got a buck with four prongs well no it really doesn't exist you might think it's an extra prong but it's really not just character they're just gross that are off a prong or you know protrusions we've had you know stuff grow out of the back of the head we've had spikes grow out of the bridge of the nose that are actually horned yeah and uh you know it uh it has nothing to do with their normal set of horns it's just and does that kit trait do those traits carry from year to year if you've got a bumpy extra little growth they don't they don't uh they that yeah they they have a you know they're you can use it kind of a three to five years old is is they're you know they're going to be big they're going to be big at

three and then they could be a little bigger at four they might fill out so to speak uh and then you know kind of like a kid going from a freshman to a sophomore sometimes they pack on 30 pounds of muscle that's kind of from two to three for an antelope yeah so so that three to five is that that's your sweet spot in terms of we're just talking horn that because that's generally a lot and i know it was younger than say deer and elk but but that's very interesting yeah if you want to kill a monster antelope if he's not big at five he's not going to be big at six yeah he's going downhill six seven and eight yeah and uh rarely is there anything aged in the field that that reaches eight uh that that's not a normal situation yeah they work you know anybody that spends time watching antelope they

are they work hard to defend their territories and rut and it's it's not an easy life they're aggressive little farts and that probably contributes to maybe an early maturity and you know shorter life expectancy you know they wear out for us they they get used up and there's such a turnover you know we hear guys all the time yeah i saw this giant when you see five years ago well he's gone he's not a factor anymore and uh they swear up and down no i just saw him yesterday well they're seeing relatives uh needless to say the way they're designed they can have like almost clones year to year sure uh there'll be certain areas that are confined for antelope and then around it there's not much antelope stuff and there will be four or five bucks in this herd or or you know they're spread out but i mean basically

and they all look alike and you just gotta you know figure out which one you're looking at each time because one will be heavier or longer or whatever but they're all related so how do you uh i mean obviously like we we follow deer or elk and sheep year to year to year and you're doing the same thing on these antelope and naming them and i mean is this something you can look and just you know that that's ernie or that's bird or whatever like you know right off the bat like that's that pretty much it doesn't usually take us more than a few seconds and one of us will pipe up all that so and so or that's yeah you know and then you know even if one of us isn't quite sure uh you know it only takes a few seconds more to figure it out so one thing one question i had you know we talked about antelope shedding that black sheath every year here in utah at least it's usually late november and

december i don't know how much it varies everywhere but that's when they do it here when you how would you characterize you know obviously some of that growth's going on when we would all consider the um bad you know deer and elk aren't growing they're shedding that time of year it's brutal it's winter and all that but antelope are are making a start so at what point does the most growth take place and at what point do you guys say all right we can start scouting now because what they've got pretty much what they got for the year yeah well it's it it changes obviously in every region or every state and uh sometimes it doesn't but you know i've been in new mexico in december and had had bucks that hadn't lost their horns yet which blew me away because here in arizona uh mid mid october they're all gone oh really you know if you're seeing a two-horned buck you're looking at a small

buck that already shed a month ago wow and uh of course we drop our fawns in april and may here yeah i mean we you can go up to uh prescott valley or chino valley and and see you know fawns everywhere in the middle of april the end of april and you just won't see that any other state no so when are they when do you see them when are they growing out fully uh you know here uh we start scouting probably you know middle of may toward the end of may because they're they're probably 95 done 90 percent somewhere in there how do you think that would vary from the more northern states say utah wyoming these other states when would you well new mexico is is a little behind us uh they dropped their fawns as late as june uh the end of june sometimes and it blows me away every year i'm like how can we be almost side by side and they're six eight weeks behind us in in fawns survival i mean drop and

and and uh you know in the way their their growth is because obviously you know the longest growing season is the reason for the biggest horns and that's why arizona new mexico always shine over utah wyoming these other states oregon because they have a shorter growing season wow they don't drop until late november december and right in the dead of winter so their tops their tops are the first things that come out okay they got their sheets and their tops start growing and if their tops don't get good moisture good feed and bad winter doesn't happen then they could be good otherwise they'll be thin which is usually the the problem we see in wyoming all the time we get great bottoms because it's a summer growth and they get great prongs because it's also summer and late spring but their tops grew in the worst time of the year in the winter so it's rare to get super heavy tops in wyoming

as often as you would see it down here where we get the smaller bases because of the hot summers hot summer yeah you know they they get long here and long in new mexico but their bottoms start to thin down long before they get killed so so do you uh you know do you shed hunt them like you're following specific bucks you want to hold on to these sheaths and score them and shed hunting shed hunting is tough i know it but i've but still like seems like the dogs and stuff chew them up they eat them don't they i mean i know when i've been out in the past out with the dog the dog will bring them back to you and then they're chewing them up yeah well think of them as scabs on your leg when they're moist and fresh they're really big well that that's that's an antelope set of horns uh in may you know in april may

they're they're softer they actually move and flex if obviously if you get a hold of one where in june they really start to get hard and solidify and then they get harder as the summer goes on they eventually pull them off and that's you know just same thing that goes through a scab on your leg and uh you know and as it does it gets smaller so the horns absolutely at the smallest when they shed it so you can't put even if you find one you're just like well he he's pretty big but it's a shell of what it probably was when it was you know well yeah you can you can bet he was probably two or three points bigger per side at his max yeah and then and then as he dries up he gets smaller and smaller and then of course you know if you look to where they pull them off they've got to have a fence or bush or

something along those lines so a lot of times the horn will fall in there or if it does hit the ground any rains you know they're real light once they dry out so they float and run down all these river bottoms and stuff and creek beds and so you've really got to know where to look and you've got to look early in the spring otherwise you know it's it's uh you know they're going to get eaten up by rodents yeah when you uh so when you're you're starting to scout here mid-may ended may june um tell us about you know their patterns like do the do you find them you know for the next four months within a square mile two miles five miles i mean what's stopping them from roaming like or do they do they have a home like other critters uh they do but i've also known them to to leave that home they get pressured in there

they will leave and sometimes i've seen them you know four five six miles away and take up residency somewhere else and uh it's frustrating when uh that happens because you know you think they got shot or or whatever and and here they were alive the whole time they just moved and uh it doesn't usually happen in a season it usually happened from season to season i see i would not imagine and i'd imagine states like you know the northern states wyoming not where they have to migrate to just simply survive winter sometimes you know dozens or you know dozens of miles and uh do they always go back to the same place maybe you guys are you guys that you guys have up there in wyoming know that but there'd be probably more variability when you got winter and snow like that where arizona that's never really

an issue they can live right well when i first started uh in the antelope uh you know everybody including the biologists in arizona you know nobody thought they migrated but you know they obviously do in nevada and wyoming and some of the colder areas because they can't live where they live in the summer there in the winter at least in some of the regions so yeah they they have to and no sometimes they don't go back to the same places uh we we know bucks that that make it year to year in in wyoming and we go back to find them and sometimes they're not there it's like well they apparently uh didn't come back or they just moved across the mountain or across the water and they found home so they stayed so they're not as is you know territorial i i should say as some animals get tell us about uh some of your

scouting and hunting tactics like obviously glass i mean obviously your glass and that's that's a no-brainer but i mean there's a lot of ways to hunt antelope and you know just tell us about some of that and what you find to be pretty effective well we we like to you know that for lack of better terms cover as much ground as as you have scouting time for you know and the only and obviously glass scope whatever but uh you know it's until we locate you know the the bigger bucks or whatever we're looking for and uh you know whether it be that or fawns or does usually if you find the does early you can bet there will be bucks later yeah and uh bucks typically will go to the does it's not the other way around does don't go to the bucks but a lot of times the bucks will go to the does and then they bring the

does back to where they were so if you don't find bucks early which is a lot of times the case because they don't have does looking out for them early on and they're roaming by themselves and they're really hard to find because they just you know for lack of better words they're like nomads it's hard to know what's in their head because it doesn't seem to be anything

until the does what uh so have you you know i see all these decoys and you know white t-shirts and you know a lot of times when i think about you i think i see you the most common side as a white t-shirt i didn't know if that had to do with the hunt or you know tell us about that kind of stuff the decoying or what any of that work or you use any of that those kind of tactics yeah i think early early on i mean i remember having a white hanky in my pocket laying out in the field and started flagging and uh you know like i had read in some sports a field or field of stream book you know many moons ago when i was a boy and i thought wow that really works um but you know it always comes to a point the bigger bucks obviously are at least three or older that works a lot on two-year-olds decoys yeah all that stuff will work uh it just works to a point

yeah once a buck has seen it he's going to circle to the wind side of you and try to wind you before he gets real close yeah uh i've seen that a lot um but like i say everything kind of works to a degree everybody comes out with new objects you know antelope suits it's like okay you're not going to catch me in an antelope suit uh come on tony the older i get the more i like living uh you know um yeah that's true i did i did hunt in a white t-shirt quite a bit back when uh it benefited me yeah you know governor's tag uh a lot of times uh you know i've had guys say get behind me they'll see you they'll see you well i'll serpentine behind the hunter you know the the guys that that want to lead the pack instead of follow but yeah but uh it confuses the animal and i can hold them longer because they are curious they want to know what the heck's going on why do i see why why

do i don't yeah but uh you know it's you know hunting them you know it's like once they see you stay seen don't try to hide once they once they know you're there yeah that that's probably the one of the biggest mistakes hunters make for antelope because they're not deer and elk well and when you're talking about flagging them and decoying them and stuff it's probably a lot like when adam and i are you know other guys are hunting elk or something a lot of times you know if you want to just hunt elk yeah go calling them but if you want to hunt a specific elk or a specific bull or a specific antelope you're you know it's not about just decoying the masses or calling the masses or or whatever so well that's that's true that's true they're they're different worlds i've you know i've been around guys that guide for antelope and they hunt them like deer certain guys and i said no

you gotta hunt them differently so if you were if you were talking i mean you guys uh talking about like we did earlier that the ear length the face length to get real references based on where you're hunting and things like that to really ultra break down a buck for you know score you know 85 90 90 plus those are very important things and the and the average that you give us i think are probably more applicable to the average guys but for for most people that draw an antelope tag get an antelope tag and they're they're going to go hunt what do you what emphasis do you think when you're looking at horns and and you know if we're if we're just taking an average face an average eared antelope what do you what do you think you'd impress upon them to look for if they're trying to kill an 80 inch plus or 82

inch plus buck what do you what emphasis should you say look for this more than this for instance well you you know i i you know obviously length is the easiest thing to see prongs are the easiest thing to see both are length you know you got two length measurements per horn prongs and the length of the horn all the way to the tip so those are what most people can do easily the hardest thing to score and is the most important to me is the mass there's four measurements per side because of the quarters and and you have to have a reference for that mass and we use the eye the eye width is typically one seven on you know 85 percent antelope probably uh it's it's right close to that number one seven eight seven eight yes from from black to black and on the eye and uh you know we use that and then place it on

the base and kind of you know visualize that and and figure out how heavy the buck is since you're dealing with the diameter of the horn obviously and you're looking at a flat side of the base versus an eye what what are you looking for how how much wider than the eye or whatever do you try to is a is a great width because obviously they can they can be fat you know oh yeah they can be real correct i mean i've had bucks that look tremendous from the side and they turn and look at you and i'm going where'd the buck go you know i mean you literally think it's a different buck because he's super thin from the front yeah so he has to be even that much bigger from the side to get to that number that you're so-called looking for you know or that you know you visualize what he was from the side and from the front you may either go up or down on that and uh there's you know obviously it's math

and uh my son is probably better at that than i am but he uh he's come up with you know ways you know to because it's not an oval but it's like an oval with a you know more of a triangular front so the way they're shaped so you know and he's uh developed little systems that that he uses and he's he's kind of a numbers guy that way and i kind of got a gut instinct type of thing the way i do it old school yeah old school just get out of the way it works very well it works very well together but usually i uh defer to the the computer numbers that that he comes up with when all the if i'm not sure yeah but uh well that's like we us and mule deer when they're like 10 by 10 you pretty much shoot them but if you want to but you can break them down and break down their frame break down the extras and

the mass but what are you you're talking about them the numbers like um what are the magic numbers what do you want that first circumference second third well you know probably an old number that you've heard a lot of seven seven seven on uh you know the bottom two mass measure you know bottom two mass and top mass uh the two combined on top if if that that's 21 a mass well you know then on length you gotta you know 16 and a five or a 15 and a six as far as the prong and the length and then you've got a 42 inch uh 21 and 21 yeah that's yeah that's an 84 inch that's 84 inches yeah you know that that's that's been our average over the 701 bucks so that would be what we would consider a shooter um you know uh obviously 82's book head and it's a shooter we look for bigger but you know it depends on where you're at what yeah where are you in your hunt you in the first 20 minutes are you in the

last day or are you in a unit that hasn't killed the book buck in 20 years you know exactly there's an 82 or three inch or you probably ought to shoot it talk about talk a little bit about what you guys look for like in the position of the prong you know how far up the horn and that how that changes the mass okay that the prong positioning is strictly it's which book you you're interested in sci or boone and crockett the lower the prong in boone and crockett typically the better off you are because you got a better first uh first quarter and base which are the two biggest mass measurements on the buck so because you're starting to get that swelling on the prong if it's correct it's starting to swell a little bit on the correct second mass okay yeah and then sci it's relative it's not easy but it's

easier to get three under the prong because if it touches a prong anywhere on the second quarter you go below to the biggest measurement either the first quarter or the base and b and c is always two below two above right is that right well most of the time probably 98 of the time that's correct there you can get three under the prong if the prong is so high that there's no prong swelling in the measurement i see so that's the definition any prong swelling it's it's gonna go below and you're you're moving to the third one above i guess what you're saying yeah correct yeah and and and then if the second quarter is anywhere on that prong even the very bottom if if they consider that part of the prong it goes above interesting that's why so second third quarter and that that explains you know for me especially you know why you'll see some bucks a wide discrepancy in an sci

with and a b and c gross gross oh yeah that's why you say that four to six i don't know inches on on a rare occasion that's a big swing when in reality like a b and c gross and sci gross typical mule there should be the exact same without right with minor variations in the score where in this is it can be a dramatically dramatically different number well we had two bucks this year that were killed in wyoming that were actually this year that one in wyoming one in arizona that were 87 and 87 to net so boone and crockett that's what they were in sci one was 94 to and the other was 93 because you got three below yeah instead of a four and a half or five inch second quarter you got seven something yeah so you know you you can grow as many as three inches per side so it can be six inches difference yeah

but um you know so it's it's other than that particular thing the books are virtually the same yeah the prong is a the prong is a little bit different because it's the upper outer edge of the prong for boone and crockett and the outer upper so they just switched the two so it's just slightly different on the prong so the prong should never be more than a half inch difference from from you know book to book yeah or rarely more than that but yeah well let's uh let's jump into this you know a big buck story or two i mean tell us about this giant wyoming buck we just kind of want to hear the story behind him state record but well the one we took uh i believe it was four or five years ago we were kind of in a oil field area of wyoming and southern wyoming and you know we we pull up and and you know

i i see this buck way out a mile and a half it's got giant prongs so we're trying to find a way to get to it and of course we run into dead end after dead end because these roads don't go anywhere and uh we see two hunters get out of their truck with rifles and spotting scopes and they hike up to this one buck had been chasing a doe back and forth and we noticed the buck and knew it was pretty big and just he had this white alkali all over his horn so it kind of didn't give you any depth perception of the horns so we didn't realize how big it was because of that because we weren't close anyway so we watched these guys look at this bucket 100 yards and turn around and go back get in their truck and leave yeah and and on the guy in the back seat he's 81 years old he says hey if that buck's over 83 i'm

shooting him and uh we got closer obviously i said oh yeah he's over 83 you know so guy gets out and shoots a buck well you know walk up on him i'm like holy cow you know the buck was 91 four net seven 17 inches long i'm like what were they looking for wow you know what did you what was your gut of course adam and i there's so many questions but what did your gut tell you when you when he asked you is he over 83 i mean did you feel like that was that you were looking at a 90 incher no what may absolutely not i'd love to tell you i i i was right on but but no i just knew he was over 83 and that was that was what was in my head because they didn't look for more than that yeah i was uh it was only like my second or third year up wyoming and we weren't familiar with that unit and you know we've never seen a 17 incher in wyoming so it was hard to picture that

but my goal was 83 that number was in my head and i i i saw that and knew it was that so get out and kill it you know yeah exactly so i wasn't really nitpicking for a bigger buck and so i didn't spend any time and let it process and uh you know that that's that's what scouting is all about but see we'd just seen the buck saw these guys pass and i thought why are they passing this buck he looks big enough and uh you know you always wonder i mean my mind's thinking i wonder if those two guys know that you killed do they know it was a 91 inch or no do they ever know probably don't like they know absolutely not they would just as soon not know i'm sure i i've seen that dozens of times up there i really have because guys are looking for a particular look yeah they want hooks or they want width or you know um my son

for instance on facebook and blogs and message boards all the time and he keeps hearing this same statement said over and over that oh if it's big you'll know it's big from different people not true and and then he'll throw a picture up well how big is this one the guy will say 80 inches well it's a 91 inch buck yeah it's a live photo so you know you know throwing his theory right out the window of oh you'll know it when you see it that's not true with antelope they hide it so well when they're heavy yeah well and that's why we're having this discussion with you so heavy on scoring it's like when you see a big mule deer you do know it you know when you see a big antelope i mean seems like half the time you might know it and the other half you're like oh what's that you know yeah we took a buck two years ago in new mexico

for instance uh one of our governor's tag guys shot him it was netted 90 so it grows more than that but it netted 90 and uh another fella that works in new mexico found it and he showed it to me so i know you won't want to shoot him because i've showed you 10 bucks bigger than this and he still can't understand to this day how that buck was that big because he just didn't see it yeah and when i saw it i said oh this is a good buck and he thought i was nuts and uh it was all about the mass that you know he thought that was the in you know second 10 bucks instead of the top buck so well that's just obviously a testament to your experience to some extent in a totally different way but sheep can be a little bit like that too some people come to hunt sheep with something in their mind with a big twister ram

that flares out which are almost non-existent in the desert sheep and to some extent rocky mountain bighorn world but they get it in their mind and that's what they want even though that's usually means it's a four or five year old ram that hasn't broomed anything yet you know and with antelope you know and i know growing up i mean there's people that love looking for white antelope if you're ever born bred hunting mule deer you grow up you want those flared out 20 inch wide antelope because that hey i killed a 20 incher you know and that means nothing on an antelope other than that's a unique look i guess you know what i mean so it does if you get somebody's with something stuck in their mind it's they can overlook what if they're really thinking they're wanting for a book antelope um you know i

had a chance last year just got flat out lucky and uh drew an antelope tag last year in unit 10 myself and you know by no stretch of the imagination have i hunted antelope a lot but you know knew that if i ever drew an arizona antelope tag i probably had something worthwhile to try to look over and you know know you've i know you guys killed some giants there like you do everywhere else but it would just simply cover the numbers but i uh you know i i used a lot of your i guess you and eli's stuff from your from your website and whatnot to give me some reference and things like that because you're right i mean i i i just about drove to flagstaff a day or two before my hunt and got my tag in my son's name because i just was i don't want to say unimpressed but it was like i figured if i saw something you

know gaggerish yeah like you've killed before tony so many times with you know mike gallow or any of these other guys these monsters like all right that's what i want but i just felt like i was looking at nice antelope which which i was anyway circumstances you know pulling them out of school and all that didn't last so i ended up i ended up going shooting opening day shooting the best one that i thought i had found and and he was a little better than i thought he was like 86 and seven inches and i'd found him earlier in the summer in fact eli sent me pictures of the buck you guys had seen him too it's not and i'm like yeah you can't get anything by then but you guys were after the 90 inches and i i i you were only 87 inches you know so but the biggest buck in the state last year was in unit 10

and uh we actually i actually we took it on the second buck we killed a different one right at daybreak and uh this buck we called him hooks and you know at a thousand yards everybody thought he was 80 inches there were guide after guide that passed him and but i we had seen that buck close so we knew that he was way bigger than that and uh we killed him at 785 yards and uh you know he blew me away because i thought he was pushing 90 but i had no idea he was 93 because because he he never stood around very long and uh clearly you know there were a bunch of mad guides they they came back to look at the buck and they said i can't believe it i thought he was 80 and i just looked at him this morning 13 inches and not it's not like a 200 and versus a 213 inch mule deer it's a 80 versus 93 percentage wise giant yeah

might as well be 50 inches difference in all reality it's well yeah when you figure in boone and crockett from the top to the bottom of the book is is 14 and a half inches yeah the number one buck to the bottom buck and that that includes like 3 500 animals 82 to 96 and change yeah wow yeah so there you go what uh what kind of glass do you like to use like tell me about your optics and your setup you're uh you know you're judging these very minute tiny you know measurements and whatnot compared to an elk or something so glass would make an important you know difference are you using doctor optics or cowas or just the sorovskys or zeiss i mean what do you guys like to use well actually uh we've got uh i used to use soroski uh my son had a lyca scope and now he's moved on to the x soroski scope which is

great for video and stuff with the wide angle lens and i've been using a meopta which is uh

just as good as far as i'm concerned other than that few minutes early and late and i love the eyepiece of it and uh of course you know with that being said we both have btx is coming from soroski oh yeah we've got them on order and we've got the highlander uh you know the the cowas uh the the fancy one you know the expensive one yeah and uh they're just they're just heavy i mean other than that they're they're fantastic yeah and uh we use you know like uh like and the six hour range finders and and uh the new like uh you know goes out to a thousand yards we can dial our rifles right in you know it's hard to range find out there in those wide open flats uh i mean on adam adam had a little bit of that here and there but on his hunt but i mean it's hard to range find them have you have you got a

little any tips on how to do that more effectively i mean you're looking across those wide open expanses and stuff yeah probably learn how to guess well go with your gut again yeah it it i mean literally i i've i've got a vectronics who you know used to have to have homeland security to buy those and now they actually have a commercial model and uh they i have ranged out to 4 800 come on 4 800 plus yards and with an antelope the farthest reading i've ever got on antelope was i think 1110 yards yeah and that was with the vectronics obviously with like and zeiss and all the others if you're lucky and the night conditions are good you'll get a 700 maybe 800 yard reading so you you're probably going to be hitting ground or rocks or or a vehicle or a barn or something other than that that tell you how far an animal is yeah at least for an antelope unfortunately the only yeah if you

got an area with scattered you know pinion juniper or something like that you're you're lucky because you might have a chance to hit that but when it's flat it's and as you all know it looks flat you you hit where the antelope's standing or if you're hitting the ridge slightly behind at 125 yards and it's it's you're going to miss him it's not even going to be close so yeah and that's why uh i tell guys that the flattest shooting rifle that you bring the better obviously we have 1500 yard rifles all three of us and uh they all work and we dial them in and our longest shot to date is 10 26 and we've got a 983 a bunch of 800 pluses so yeah you know we're able to do it but you have to have the right gotta have the right range well any other uh crazy crazy experiences or notable stories um that you've had out there in the field you know knocking down hundreds and hundreds of book bucks

yeah probably you know i mean they'll all come to me when i when we hang up but uh no i uh you know nothing that i can think of that that was just kind of a funny story and uh the fact that it worked out for us uh made it even better yeah of the 701 you said 400 and some odd were being seen net official bucks but take it to the next level you probably know like how many how many 90 inchers or things like that have you taken and and notable giants 66 over 90 bnc and 114 over 90 sci including obviously the world record in both books um which is tell us which is uh 90 96 for bnc and uh actually my brother in 1986 in new mexico killed the sci world record at 99 7 couldn't quite hit 100 dang it well an eighth right there's there's you need to be just a little drier that year it was an eighth off wow you think that'll ever

happen you think there's a hundred inches possible and i know we're talking probably yeah we took number we took number two over in new mexico in a different area and he had a broken horn so his one horn was 14 7 his other one was 16 and he grossed 99 2 so had he had that tip so we're talking 16 inch and an eight yeah 16 inch that would have been a hundred inches so that shows you how important mass is i mean people might think it needed to be a 20 a 21 inch or something well his second quarters were as big as most bases i mean they were like six one and six three above the pro above the pro six plus that's unbelievable so yeah sounds like that's possible it'd be a triple digit official antelope would be pretty not that a 90 inch is not special what's your goal let's talk about that what's your what's your goals

you've met all your original goals now what are the new goals yeah my you know in fact i just passed one of my goals of 190 enters uh a year ago a year and a half ago but uh so yeah i kind of had to develop new goals and that's one goal i would like to is i mean my brother doesn't want to see me do it but i'd like to break the sci world record yeah yeah that's about all else that's left for you is a 100 inch or official i guess is something yeah that that would be sweet and and maybe even break the boon and crockett record again yeah i don't know if that's entirely possible but maybe that's right buck well tell us about eli a little bit how old is he uh when did he start you know and get major involvement he likes 36 and he pretty much started when he was six and seven every birthday i said what do you want to do he says take me antelope scouting yeah and not not camping not to the toy

store but take me antelope scouting so that's probably probably the only kid in the united states that i know probably ever said that yeah might might be might be well that's why he is what he is chip off the old block sounds like i had a guide get hurt back in uh when he was i don't know 16 or 18 or whatever it was i got an emergency 10-day guides license that they allowed in new mexico and that's kind of how he started and he killed uh i think one of the biggest bucks uh that year and we had a tough area yeah i think he killed one close to 84 with his client yeah crazy and uh that was kind of how he started and and he's just been getting better and better and better and and uh him and dave brown my other guide there's just three of us and uh they've been with us for 19 years and and as good

as they get so these two guys will be running the show before too long yeah well maybe not you got plenty of years left so that's a good thing about antelope is i think you're saying was that is that wyoming client was he 80 years old 80 81 yeah well that's why i i mean you you gotta hunt antelope when you're i mean you can pull the trigger still you can still hunt antelope well you asked me what what drew me to them and other than the other things i said i i thought to myself well this is something i can do when i get really old well i'm almost there well it's a lot of experience and uh you know we sure appreciate you taking time today and what a what a treat it is for us to learn from one of the best there ever has been as far as killing giant antelope and making a livelihood out of it never

you know just almost didn't dream that a guy could make a full-on you know livelihood for geez decades yeah killing we had uh had 44 hunters last year one of our bigger years i mean we've had two or three years that kind of number and uh yeah it's it's a lot of work it and like say it's pretty much year around for us now uh the hunting isn't but everything is else is yeah yeah it takes a lot to to do it full-time and well that's great well uh anything else you want to leave us with as we as we shut this thing down you know if a guy uh doesn't doesn't want to hire us or talk to us or or you know he can always learn from our two videos that we have out and uh you know one is uh it sizes everything one and sizes everything too got uh i think 17 kills on the second one of 90 inch bucks or bigger wow and the first

one uh does a i do a 30 minute uh field judging seminar in it and uh pretty much a lot of that stuff i i probably couldn't quote you today because you know you you don't uh religiously do it on every buck you tend to forget some of the important things yeah well the videos uh sometimes i have to look at it to refresh my brain yeah well good and how can how can people get a hold of those tony uh on our website pronghorn guideservice.com okay and uh they can order it through there and uh sportsman's warehouse used to carry it cabela's yeah okay all right well we sure appreciate you taking time uh you know we've learned a lot and uh god what a treat it was so really appreciate you thanks a lot and wish you a great year you guys this summer kicks in here a lot of the draw results i know arizona new mexico are out and wyoming's yet to come so hope you guys have a great year

and we look forward to seeing a bunch of giant photos from you later in the fall cool i appreciate it and uh it was fun we'll get you some big photos of big bucks this year sounds great um yeah we just want to close down we really appreciate under armor and being able to sponsor this podcast and work with us on it and uh well we'll go from there and looking forward to putting our hands on some more big antelope all righty thank you all right thanks tony okay bye