Hank Osterkamp killed his first pronghorn on a visit to Idaho when he was 12 years outdated. The hunter from southern California has chased loads of antelope since then, and when he headed to New Mexico for a visit with Pronghorn Information Service final month, he and his information David Brown already had a goal buck in thoughts. With Brown pointing him in the precise path, Osterkamp was capable of drop the practically 30-inch-wide pronghorn inside the first quarter-hour of opening day.
The buck they nicknamed “Chopper” is a freak of nature (in a great way) by pronghorn requirements. As an alternative of pointing up and curving gracefully inward, its horns splay out horizontally (kind of just like the blades on a helicopter). The buck has an inside unfold of 29 and ¾ inches from tip to tip. With roughly 84 inches of antler in complete, Osterkamp says the non-typical buck was precisely what he was in search of.
“He was only a big in each sense of the phrase,” Osterkamp says. “A large tremendous freak, you realize. For some motive I’ve at all times simply been in love with the freaks.”
Osterkamp says he’d hunted with Brown earlier than, who helped him kill his greatest pronghorn thus far with a personal landowner tag again in 2017. When Osterkamp drew a public land tag within the central a part of New Mexico earlier this 12 months, he was already wanting ahead to searching with Brown once more.
He says Brown referred to as him up a couple of weeks earlier than their hunt on Aug. 14 and instructed him he’d already discovered a novel wanting buck on the chunk of public land they have been planning to hunt. He despatched Osterkamp a photograph of the buck and that was all he wanted to see.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my god, that factor’s superb,’” Osterkamp says, “and I instructed David, ‘You’ll be able to cease wanting proper now. I don’t even need to take into consideration one other one.’”
Since Brown had achieved many of the legwork by the point Osterkamp arrived in central New Mexico, they knew precisely the place they have been headed on opening morning. The 2 had glassed the buck the night earlier than, and after they drove out to the identical space earlier than dawn, the buck hadn’t moved far. They may see Chopper’s blades from a mile away.
By quarter-hour after taking pictures mild, the 2 had slowly labored their solution to inside 250 yards or so of the buck. Osterkamp received his Gunwerks 28 Nosler on the taking pictures sticks and squeezed off a shot. He spined the buck and it dropped in its tracks.
He and Brown rough-scored the buck within the mid-80’s, and Osterkamp says he’ll have a Boone and Crockett scorer have a look at the rack after the 60-day drying interval ends. “He could possibly be a record-book buck whilst freaky as he’s,” Osterkamp provides.
