Lobster of the Prairie: Wyoming Antelope | S6E03 | MeatEater

on this hunt i'm searching for an iconic american animal that abounds in contradictions just ask around and people will tell you that the antelope or american prong horn is both rare and everywhere it's an easy quarry and a tough one it tastes like trash and it tastes like heaven but if there's one thing that everyone agrees on it's that this critter is one of a kind out here on the plains nothing comes close i'm stephen ranella to me hunting isn't only about the pursuit of an animal it's about who we are and what we're made of i live to hunt and hunt to live i am a meat-eater [Music] on this hunt i'm going after antelope out on the great plains of wyoming [Music] i have never been here before i don't have any friends or relatives that ever hunted here before i'm just gonna figure it out as i go along when you come into a place like this i come in with a bunch of water because if it rains out here and the ground turns the gumbo you can get easily stuck back here for a couple days if you come way back in once i get a setup like this i'm ready to go i prefer to never move the truck i like to hunt on foot i like to walk around i sleep better at night if i walk around i see more better cooler stuff i like to walk on first afternoon of the hunt and my plan is to do nothing but glass i just want to see what and who is around and what it's up to just get a general sense of this place's vibe while resisting the urge to go tearing off after the first buck i see that way i can get a complete picture of the situation without bumping game and clearing out the area antelope country is like you know it's pretty flat so you can lose your sense of how remote and rugged the area might be [Music] antelope live on the great plains or a creature of the plains the vast majority of antelope can't jump a fence they did not evolve somewhere where they had to jump over trees and jump over down logs they're an animal to open you always hear that the two fastest land animals antelope and cheetah in a sprint sure cheat is going to smoke the animal but in a long distance run antelope's going to smoke cheetah they can keep high speeds up they can go you know 30 35 miles an hour and hold it for hours if they need to they have top speeds much higher than that they can hold that kind of run [Music] antelope are at once easy to find and hard to find [Music] easy to find because they have that white flank the other thing is an antelope will puff out the hair on its rump and when it puffs out the hair on its rump that rump turns white and that really gets the attention of the other ones when you see one do that it's almost done he's gonna book not a happy antelope when i say they're hard to find it's because the landscape that they're in one in which they never even had to learn to jump is deceptively flat because there are so many folds and there's so much texture like corduroy texture to it that you can look and look and look in a place like this and be like okay i glassed this place out but you're looking right over the tops of many antelope that are laying down in these little folds there are plenty of antelope out here so i'm not feeling stressed about getting an opportunity in addition i'm seeing dozens of cottontails perhaps more than i've ever seen in one place before their populations go into rhythmic cycles from boom to bust there's no doubt we're at the apex i can't help myself but want to round a few up when i'm uh mixing in a little bit of pot hunting in with a big game hunt i carry these little 22 rounds called subsonic they're like half the speed of a normal 22 round but they sound like an air rifle you know they're only going like 750 feet per second so you can do a little small game hunt now then without blowing out your area with loud noises [Music] so [Music] i'm browning the rabbit and then i'm braising it in beer [Music] [Music] [Music] with a belly full of rabbit in the landscape stacked with game i'm feeling good and ready to get after it tomorrow [Music] i'm traveling down this goalie thinking i'd be keeping a low profile i just bumped some mule deer out of this bottom and they carried off a pretty nice and low buck with them i mean this is like these kind of bottoms are good to traveling typically because you're not skylining yourself that's just plain bad luck right there [Music] one thing i like about these washes like this there's so much stuff always coming out of the banks lots of different animals used to be around here that aren't around here anymore there used to be many other members of the antelope family living here in north america there were five species in the antelope family here on the great plains there's now one left so when you're out antelope hunting and you find these like gravel deposits and stuff and these eroded banks and you find bones you never really know how far back these sediment layers might be taking you [Music] this is public land blm bureau of land management a lot of people don't think about it this way but it's your land along with everybody else who's watching you have as much of a right to be out here as they do it's a powerful feeling when you think about it the right way all these animals are running around on your place [Music] i haven't seen another person out here since leaving the main road the county road back not laid out in another person or a truck there's a antelope blowing at us right now you can smell them there's a buck right here i can smell them and i can hear when you put your nose onto an antelope especially to a buck it smells like frito-lay corn chips real strong like your fingers will smell like frito-lay chips after you do that i'm seeing so many antelope i can afford to wait until i find a mature buck a reluctance i have about closing the distance on any of these far-off antelope is that you inadvertently bump animals that you didn't know were there those antelope then hightail it usually through the midst of other groups of antelope and often the ones you're actually stalking and then the whole gang of them head off into the sunset together such fears are enough to keep you in one place though admittedly if you wanted to not spook antelope today you'd pretty much have to stay in your tent because like my hair on my toes over at the head there's a nice what i like about that spot the lane features around there are pretty distinct and it seems like there's some pretty good avenues of approach the antelope i want to get closer to her that way but i'm starting out by going this way that fact should give you like a good idea about the roundabout nature of stalking antelope to get to something a mile away you might walk three miles [Music] these cuts like here this big cup coming down like this deep goldie these are great ways to travel if you're doing the stock to get down to these goalies the problem is you know you can get disoriented i really figure i'd know where you're at [Music] this is like the field of life and death there's a mule deer drop what you can say signifies life because he managed to make it through hunting season and then drop his antler but then here he got something killed a hawk a big drop in there [Music] that's pretty cool it's new still reeks it's still soft see man love walking around on these plates [Music] i honestly haven't got any claws but they haven't spoke to me [Music] right down here and wait until she moves away [Music] as i crawl to the edge of that spot i've been heading to for hours i have in my head what i want to see right down to the details where the animals will be what the buck will be doing how far the shot will be how much time i'll have to make it in other words i've made the mistake of having assumptions and from there you mix in a little adrenaline and you really start to get stupid i think we're not looking at this right oh there they are right there [Music] that was a bad shot [Music] i don't understand how i can miss that mini analog but not notice them down in there [Music] oh man why did i screw that up writing a little sanctuary too man you got a perfect little hideout up here [Music] there are hunting mistakes that i just shouldn't make anymore i had my mind made up of what i was going to see and that caused me to look right over the top of a bunch of bedded down antelope less than 100 yards away i rushed to get a rest and pull the trigger on what i know is a bad shot that i'm ill prepared for at least i'm glad i wasn't a tad more accurate a bad hit is a lot worse than a clean miss the buck walks unscathed my ego wounded i'm walking panel about in back of us on that big eye bench thankfully that's not the ones i'm after there's another group coming up over here with a good pocket [Music] i like that because he never even knew i was here [Music] do [Music] so rather than skinning this and quartering it in the dark risking getting the meat dirty and stuff just from rushing it not being able to see good and everything i'm gonna take advantage of these trees right over here now that i got them gutted i'm just gonna hang them for the night and that tree so coyotes can't get them and then come back up tomorrow morning and be able to take my time and do it right it wasn't chilly i wouldn't do it but honestly it's almost better to hang them for a while in the cool that i'm set up before i start cutting [Music] [Music] i was young we called these inside loins you know it's a tenderloin it's also good to rinse them because when you're gutting it's easy to spill urine or stomach contents they're so small on an antelope they can dry out so it's better not to freeze it and just use it quickly give them a quick rinse and let them dry throw them on the grill when you dismantle a carcass most states require that you leave evidence of sex having the head along with you doesn't count you might be like well how am i going to do that if i'm taking the thing apart what you want to do is just take a nut skin the nut and leave it hanging just a clean little nut ski hang into the meat like so so now i can skin the whole thing pull off the back leg and i got this testicle here as evidence of sex one testicle's fine i could take this other testicle and do high plains oysters so you've heard of rocky mountain oysters we'll call this a high plains version [Music] antelope meat is great it's a bad rap by a lot of guys i think that a lot of guys one they suck at cooking or they just don't take care of their stuff when you're doing meat field care in hot weather you want to have the best cooler you can afford and then buy either block ice or better than blocks to take gallon milk jugs or two liter pot bottles fill them with water and freeze it then have the ice on the bottom and lay the meat on top of the ice not in the water but laying on those blocks or laying on those jugs they will get cold now my thing's cold i got three whole nice blocks in the bottom my meat is not touching water i'm gonna close this lid and then not open that lid again [Music] antelope is very lean meat so i add a lot of oil or butter to it when i'm cooking especially grilling it cause you can just dry it right out i do the same thing if i'm grilling the home this is just is no different i might not use some pine needles for a brush but or not pretty much around the money lay that down on there start grilling him first time i've ate wild game nuts was on a hunt for antelope and we had a whole bunch of them and we made a dish that we named hot buttered bucknuts what is bucknut's cooked in butter and then you add a little hot sauce to them in the end so i'm just gonna let him cook a while the best way to like describe game nuts is it tastes like grilled octopus combined with bacon hot buttered buck nuts great little appetizers [Music] you know it's unfortunate that antelope meat has a bad wrap in some circles if you don't like antelope meat you just like you don't like meat or something wrong with you or i don't know what it is phenomenal and if you think it tastes gamey you've grown up eating the wrong stuff and you're just not used to what animals taste like it's just good you

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 725,436

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, meat eater, Steve rinella, hunting, shooting, antelope, shooting sports, big game hunting, wyoming hunting, western hunting, antelope hunting, speed goat, pronghorn

Id: tL8wLX31ws0

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021