WSMR Oryx Hunt Last Weekend

[grayghost03]

Windy with alittle rain, but the animals are there and the hunt was great, hunting with your 82yr old Dad, daughter, and best friend, priceless, taking a nice trophy, icing on the cake.

 

[Speckmisser]

Dang, that's a cool lookin' animal! Nice work!

 

[DEERSLAM]

Beautiful animal!!
Congrats. I hope to draw a tag in NM someday for Oryx.

 

[grayghost03]

It was a great time, my Dad, who is 82yrs young, and has guided desert bighorn hunters his whole life came in from Ariz, my daughter 29yrs old and a hunter, and my hunting buddy(my muscle for this trip) all signed on for the hunt. I did my research, talked to Remfak on the phone as he had hunted in Aug, I called the WSMR bioligist and talked with him. Remfak put me on a area that he said held good oryx.
We pulled in Friday evening and the weather was not predicted to be good, Saturday morning was the orientation and it rain some and the wind was blowing, which it did for the next 2 days. Saturday, we drove to the planned hunt area, set up the glass and had a herd of 30, and a couple of groups of 2 and 3 located in 5 minutes, they were 1000yds or more away, but it pretty much seemed that everytime we made a hunt(park the truck and 2 of us would make a 2 or 3 mile short hunt) we found oryx. A few hunters messed up some stalks and the wind wiped out a couple more stalks. But no worries, they were there. We saw alot of Bulls and Cows that were bigger then the 36" I took, but the hunting was alittle tough with the weather. Took it Sunday at around noon, up in the foothills of the mountains, it gave me a neck shot (I know they tell you don't go for the neck shot due to the location of the spine) at 167yds, 30-06, 180 A-Frame Preimium and she never took a step, 5 hours later she was at the highway, yep, she went down 2.5 miles from the blacktop, we had to rebuild road on the walk out, but got the truck to within 30yds of where she dropped. Harvest was low for this hunt. I will try to attached the hunt report. Hunting with my Dad again was great.

October 11-12, 2008 Rhodes Canyon Oryx Hunt Summary


Permits 110

Hunters 101 92%

Denied Entry 0 0%

Violations 0 0%

Kills 67 66%

Adults 51 76%

Adult Bulls 24 4 Adult Cows 27 53%

Reported Pregnant 7 26%

Subadults 16 24%

All Bulls 36 54%

All Cows 31 46%

Non-Typical 13 19%




Average of LHL (inches)
Average of RHL (inches)
Average of LBC (inches)
Average of RBC (inches)
Average of SCORE (inches)

Adult Cows
35.667
35.270
5.932
5.875
80.643

Adult Bulls
34.60
34.397
7.11
7.184
83.355

Adult Oryx
35.163
34.820
6.497
6.546
81.999

Top Bull
40
39.25
7.75
7.75
92.5

Top Cow
42
42
6
6
96
Additional Notes:

Five WSMR access fees collected
Nine no shows
No violations
34 no harvests
14 out of 23 non-resident hunters harvested an oryx (two no shows)
Seven out of twelve guided hunters harvested an oryx.
Professional guide success rate was 58%
Five out of fifteen broken horn hunters harvested an oryx (two no show)
Three out of five veteran hunters harvested an oryx (One no show)
43 out of 101 hunters harvested on Day 1 of the scheduled 2-day hunt.
Four hunters that participated on Day 1 without harvesting did not show up for day 2.
Windy weather was a major contributor to low harvest rate for the 2-day hunt as well as a low broken-horn success rate. Broken-horn hunters who did not harvest indicated they didn’t have many opportunities to harvest an oryx and several indicated they did not have one opportunity.
Hunters reported that the oryx they did see were 800 to 1000 yards away and running making opportunities very difficult.
One barbary was reported south of RR12 on the northern end of the Malpais.
No major conflicts were reported during the hunts

 

[spratheribm]

Wish to give me some pointers for my December hunt? E-mail me at sprather@sbcglobal.net.....

Thanks
Shane

 

[spratheribm]

Hunt was great. Shot this 35" bull at 623 yards after a 300 yard belly crawl - I made the hunt hard but the wind was rediculous and we had blown the stalk on this group more than once:

Shot him the first day about 1:00 after the wind picked up to about 30 MPH......

 

[spratheribm]

Another pic.....

 

[bzzboyz]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spratheribm @ Dec 17 2008, 04:07 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

Hunt was great. Shot this 35" bull at 623 yards after a 300 yard belly crawl - I made the hunt hard but the wind was rediculous and we had blown the stalk on this group more than once:

Shot him the first day about 1:00 after the wind picked up to about 30 MPH......[/b]

623 Yards?????

Great shot.

What were you shooting?

 

[spratheribm]

Weatherby 30-378 with a Swarovski TDS-4 reticle
180 Nosler Accubond

I had my third bar (4th crosshair) at zero on the shot so it worked out perfect......Except for the wind drift but that worked out OK also.....

 

[bzzboyz]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spratheribm @ Dec 19 2008, 10:24 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

Weatherby 30-378 with a Swarovski TDS-4 reticle
180 Nosler Accubond

I had my third bar (4th crosshair) at zero on the shot so it worked out perfect......Except for the wind drift but that worked out OK also.....[/b]

Excellent shot.

Though I'd probably use a ballistic tip on that far of a shot to cut down on the drop.