Many things are required to prepare for a hunt, an important one is a trip to the Albuquerque shooting range to check rifle sighting and performance.
This picture was taken from the bench rest looking at my target at the 100 yard line. While it looks tiny, the little orange speck in the center of the paper is actually 6 inches in diameter.
Big game hunting practice is to adjust the point of impact to be about 3" high at 100 yards then the point of impact will be about centered at 200 yards. This effectively eliminates any need for hold over or under from zero to about 250 yards before the bullet drop will become so pronounced that some hold over will be required. I was very satisfied with the above group :-)
Good friend and neighbor, Andrew agreed to go along on my hunt even though he had not been successful in the drawing for permits. We are packed up and ready to go.
A 4 hour road trip got us to this nice campground in the tiny village of Capulin in the far NE corner of NM. The camp is only 4 miles from the ranch that we will be hunting on. The rancher graciously gave us a tour of his ranch and we saw 30-40 antelope and half a dozen mule deer the day before the season opened.
The next morning we were up at dawn and driving to the ranch. With happy luck we saw a legal buck about 5 minutes after driving through the rancher's cattle gate.
The rifle did its job and the exciting part of the hunt was over at 7:04 AM and the work was about to begin.
Andrew and I carried the antelope closer to the car and got ready to do the field dressing. Note the rancher's unconcerned cattle in the background.
The rancher, Tolo Martinez, met us at a place where we were going to skin and quarter the antelope. He took our picture then helped us gently drive off his curious horses.
We finished the work in a couple of hours and headed back to camp to ice down the meat and take a welcome shower.
A view of part of the general store in Capulin. In addition to buying ice, we picked up a brochure for the nearby Capulin Volcano.
Capulin Volcano was a relatively recent creation about 60,000 years ago. It rises about 1300' above the surrounding plains and the National Park Service has made a paved road spirling around the cone to the rim.
Image from brochure
Nice view from the top of the surrounding country.
View down into the crater. Click on image for a larger size. Red arrows indicate people hiking the rim and crater bottom.
This is a reduced size panoramic image. Click on it for the full size version then click again to expand that image. Use your mouse to drag the horizontal and vertical scroll bars to view all parts of the full size image. Notice how many times Andrew appears.
Click the above image to obtain a more readable size.
After exploring the volcano, we drove to nearby Folsom, NM.
The significance of Folsom is best explained by this clip from the American Museum of Natural History.
Folsom had a quait old museum that we visited.
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My grandfather Heald,said he used to walk behind a plow pulled by a team of his horses. He said he used to find Indian arrow heads. Later when he would plow with his new tractor, he did not find arrow heads as often. |
| My grandfather also owned a grinding wheel like this one only his wheel was in much better condition. As a boy, I would sit on the seat and crank the pedals to made the wheel spin so I could sharpen my pocket knife. |  |
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Andrew standing next to a really large pot belly stove in the museum. |
Other museum miscellany.
Many thanks to Andrew for assisting me on this hunt and to Janet and Carol for suppling the good food.
The meat is in the freezer and the horns have been mounted over the fireplace in the den.
Jerry