houston
Member
Eleven months ago I drew a once in a lifetime permit to hunt Oryx on the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. This past week Double Lung accompanied me on this hunt. We met up with Bob Atwood, an outfitter from Belen NM, that I hired to get us on the range and help find the Oryx. The weather was calling for 12” of snow in the dessert, now what kind of luck was that, I had already been snowed out of a late season hunt in North West Canada three weeks earlier. As it turned out only two inches fell and we were in good shape.
Oryx are a herd animal that was released in New Mexico in the mid 1960’s coming from Africa as an endangered species at the time, in which case they now have flourished on both continents with game management.
Our morning was starting out with its best effort to snow that was possible, and spotting the Oryx was challenging. Once we found a group, we started a stalk, however they were moving to quick, so we backed out and got the truck to get ahead of them a mile or more and try to pick them back up. It worked this time and we found them at 1000 yards and proceeded to make an angle that would get us within range. At the 400-yard mark they again started to angle away from us when one of the lead bulls strayed out a little to far. Rocky estimated him to be a 36” category, at that moment Double Lung set the tripod up and ranged him one more time, it was show time in a desert snow storm. The bull stopped broadside at 325 yards and at that moment time stood still, at the report of the 300 WSM the familiar sound of the hit was evident, the bull whirled around and ran 30 yards before expiring. After reconfirming he was down to stay, we all thanked our maker for the day and the harvest. The bull measured 35 ¼ “ with 7 ½ “ bases, which is 7-9 years old. To share that experience with a friend, and knowing I’ll never be able to draw that tag again, it was truly a hunt of a lifetime!
Oryx are a herd animal that was released in New Mexico in the mid 1960’s coming from Africa as an endangered species at the time, in which case they now have flourished on both continents with game management.
Our morning was starting out with its best effort to snow that was possible, and spotting the Oryx was challenging. Once we found a group, we started a stalk, however they were moving to quick, so we backed out and got the truck to get ahead of them a mile or more and try to pick them back up. It worked this time and we found them at 1000 yards and proceeded to make an angle that would get us within range. At the 400-yard mark they again started to angle away from us when one of the lead bulls strayed out a little to far. Rocky estimated him to be a 36” category, at that moment Double Lung set the tripod up and ranged him one more time, it was show time in a desert snow storm. The bull stopped broadside at 325 yards and at that moment time stood still, at the report of the 300 WSM the familiar sound of the hit was evident, the bull whirled around and ran 30 yards before expiring. After reconfirming he was down to stay, we all thanked our maker for the day and the harvest. The bull measured 35 ¼ “ with 7 ½ “ bases, which is 7-9 years old. To share that experience with a friend, and knowing I’ll never be able to draw that tag again, it was truly a hunt of a lifetime!
