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White Sands Oryx
189 Plays2 years ago
Today Drew is joined by Conner Cox. Connor discusses how he drew two New Mexico White Sands Oryx tags within 6 months of each other. He goes into detail about the process and everything that goes into one of these on range hunts that so many of us apply for.
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Transcript
Introduction and Prayer
00:00:06
Speaker
You are listening to the Tricer Podcast, where we talk all things hunting, gear, and the great outdoors. Before we begin, let's start things out right and put God first. Lord Jesus, I thank you for Tricer, and I ask that you can use this podcast as a way to bring joy to all of our listeners. We lay Tricer and this podcast at your feet.
Guest Introduction: Connor Cox
00:00:31
Speaker
All right, another podcast joined with Connor Cox today. Connor, how are you doing? Doing good. How are you? Doing great, dude. I'm stoked to get on here with you and talk about hunting.
Oryx Hunting in New Mexico
00:00:39
Speaker
Connor hit me up. He has done two on-range oryx hunts in New Mexico, which I apply for every year and do not draw. So I want to hear about these hunts and the animals you killed and what the process is like. I actually might be a once in a lifetime tag for non-residents. So it's a once in a lifetime for residents as well. Just also have the option of a broken horn after drawing your life.
00:01:00
Speaker
Oh, okay. That's a good end around. There you go. You drew that thing twice, huh? Yeah, about six months apart. That is awesome. Good for you. All right. So with that said, man, tell me about yourself. Who are you?
Growing Up on a Research Ranch
00:01:13
Speaker
So I'm a traveling technician for a company out of South Dakota now. Grew up in Mexico on a 42-section research ranch. Grew up hunting mule deer, watching all the guys run around chasing them down there. I'm from California. What's a 42-section research ranch? What is that?
00:01:28
Speaker
So it's a ranch that's owned by New Mexico State University. When I say section, a square mile, 648. So we were a pretty large ranch. You have quite a bit of mule deer back before the drought started. So we used to guide a lot of hunters out of there. And I grew up just hanging out at hunting, watching them kill big old mule deer off. That's awesome. So even though the state owns it, they still let you hunt it? Yes. So they allow buy tags, get in with the Outfitting Company, come out and hunt. When I was a kid, they used to have 30 to 40 hunters come out. All of them kill a buck over 100.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, they do a lot of landowner tags in New Mexico, right? And then I know that. And then they do take care of their guides. So the non-residents kind of get the shaft down there. The one nice thing for us is that everyone gets this fair shakeout.
New Mexico's Hunting Draw System
00:02:10
Speaker
There's no points.
00:02:10
Speaker
So I mean, even if it's a 2% draw on, everyone has the same 2% draw as if somebody's gonna draw it. So I always say New Mexico is a must apply state for anyone who wants to hunt, because you might as well put your name in there, because you never know when you're gonna get drawn. But they also have a guide pool, where when you're putting it with a guide, it increases your odds pretty substantially. Like say it's a 2% unit, maybe that's an 8% unit, now that you have a guide.
00:02:31
Speaker
I'm just throwing numbers out there, but it is something pretty substantial. I've drawn a tag over there for Barbary Sheep, and we used a guide for two days, because you have to keep them for at least 48 hours. So we drew the tag with the guide for 48 hours, and then after that we were DIY. So it was kind of like an end-around trick to getting a tag down there to go hunting. So there's a few little tips and tricks in there. There's some loopholes you can play with that draw system to get a tag.
00:02:54
Speaker
I'm always trying to draw a tag somewhere, but New Mexico is a must apply for
Family Hunting Traditions
00:02:58
Speaker
me. So, sweet, so you grew up hunting. I mean, you've been hunting your whole life. Grew up shooting, you know, got a 22, got a red rider, got a 22, got a 20 gauge, went out and killed some doves, killed some rabbits, and you know, how'd you, so your whole family hunts, I take it?
00:03:10
Speaker
So my dad really wasn't a big hunter. He did when he was a kid. They lived in the city, so it was just taking trips out to go hunting every year. And he kind of fell out of it, got into his working life and raising kids. And then he'd go out and help butcher animals there at the hunting camp. So we used to go hang out with them, watch the guide run around, taking these guys out. Then from there, it just, I fell in love with it. Seeing these guys come back with, man, it's all I ever do. I threw my first tag when I was 13. Got to go take him to the deer and hadn't turned back since.
00:03:35
Speaker
All right, so what is the hunting age order? Is it 12 for deer tags? I don't remember on New Mexico's age limit. I think it's just a hunter safety search. I don't know if they actually have a true bottom on it, but I was 13 when I drew my first tag. I think I might've had a buddy through it at 12, but I mean, before that, it's hard to carry around that rifle, let alone shoot it. So tell me about that. Tell me about that first deer. I saw my first deer. I drew a tag for our local unit. Got to go hunt on some land near the ranch and went out hunting all day and I was triggered happy. First one I saw, if I saw a buck.
00:04:05
Speaker
Are you by yourself? I went with my dad. My country's real wooded. Lots of juniper trees, pretty thick stuff. Kind of on the edges of all the mountains, pretty flat. So you do a lot more road hunting back in those days. So we just drove around all day. I don't think we saw a buck probably about four o'clock in the afternoon. We came up over a hill and maybe 10, 15 yards to my right, there was a buck standing there with a doe.
00:04:27
Speaker
I get all trigger happy and it's on the wrong side of the pickup so there's no way I can get it without backtracking or going forward so we drive past it. Ended up coming back around and he'd circled back around behind us. It was over next to a livestock water so we snuck up as close as we could get. Got to about 150 yards and I was using my dad's. He's got a two rifles that are not Mazur 98 German rifle.
00:04:47
Speaker
that have been sporterized and rechambered. He's got a .30-06 and a .22-50. I took that .22-50 out there and set up. We waited for it, and he said, as soon as it walks away from that water trough, and as soon as it stepped away from the water trough, I triggered a perfect double lung shot, me being young and not around, killing stuff that often. It took a couple of steps, and I was like, oh man, we better shoot it again.
00:05:10
Speaker
It's like, no, it's going down. You're fine. You're fine. And that was my first buck.
Rifles and Gear for Hunting
00:05:14
Speaker
Just a little, not much mass to him. He had all five points. It was real small, kind of a cull buck out of the herd, but got my first mule deer there at the age of 13. That's awesome. 22-250 is a wicked cartridge. Yeah, after World War II, everyone came back and wanted to hunt and they took those mousers and then the spring fields and they sporterized them and those were the hunting rifles. And that's 30-06 was just what they shot in the war and so they shot at animals. Honestly, it's a phenomenal cartridge.
00:05:38
Speaker
Oh, it really is. The 30-Out-6, and it's just we've kind of all, I've almost think about building one again, since everyone's going to all these fancy cartridges, but man, like, that cartridge just works, man, for what we're doing. And in Western big game hunting, it's a cool cartridge, and you can buy it in any liquor store in this country, that's for sure. Exactly, and it's probably killed more big game in the world than anything else.
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, and that 22-250 is just a wicked cartridge. I mean, it's just a, you know, shooting so flat and so fast. It's great for, great for deer, great for freaking groundhogs and prairie dogs. Really not an expensive ammo either? Yeah, not at all. That's, that's fun, man. That's really fun. Cool. So you got them and then butchered them up. You still got this antlers or what?
00:06:16
Speaker
I do, I've got him mounted at my, er, what do you call it? European mounted. They're at my parents house. Him and my younger brother's buck and my second buck are hanging in the shop there at my parents house. Nice. Are you doing your own euros? I did on those. I have done some with getting people to do them, but it's do it yourself. Kinda relaxing after and sitting there by a boiling pot of water.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's not too scary. People are scared to do it. I do my other pressure cooker and just a big pot of water and I don't boil it. I get it simmering right and do some soap in there. I've had some hard times with some pigs and I have like one elk skull that just did not want to go white. There's just some color on it. But yeah, it's not hard to do, man. People do it and I just take some developer.
00:06:52
Speaker
You know, like number 40 developer, when it's all cleaned, a lot of times I'll actually soak it in hot water for like, I have like a horse heater. I said it's like 110, 108. I'll soak that skull for a week just to get all the grease out of it and then take it outside and I'll just put some developer on there and you know, after one or two days, the thing's clean and good to go and I got a skull and looks good enough. Exactly, yeah.
00:07:12
Speaker
I mean, the beetles are nice. Do you get all the nose stuff in there still? It looks really good, but I don't care to have a box of beetles in my house. They smell really bad. Yeah. I mean, we kill a lot with having, you know, three of us hunting in the house, right? Plus friends. We kill a lot of animals every year. It gets expensive, paying 150, 200 bucks for a euro. At least that's what it's costing here in San Diego now. Yeah, that's about what it is here. So let's just do it ourselves. You're not pretty good. Good enough.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, no, I do it myself most of the time. To do that, I should do a little product sale real quick, so I don't have any with me here, but Tricerbino Adapter. Go buy a Tricerbino Adapter. They are awesome. One piece, arc of Swiss, locked around there, not to have two plates, comes with two studs. Go buy a Tricerbino Adapter. $49.99.
Product Pitch: Tricer Bino Adapter
00:07:55
Speaker
That's my pitch. That's my commercial. That's how professional this podcast is. So go buy a Bino Adapter.
00:08:00
Speaker
All right, so now I want to know all about the process of putting Oryx over there because I have not done it. I've seen them off range. I'm tempted to go back. I know where they are off range. I'm tempted to go back and do it there. I just every year, it never really works out for me on the timing. It's actually a pretty long season. You could hunt them from July through like March, I believe, over there. Yes, I believe it's a, I think some of the tags, if you're not bordering states, I think you can actually get it for 365 days. Really? Yeah. Wow. And so Oryx, do you know the history on those things at all or am I going to butcher it for us?
00:08:49
Speaker
They'd already killed off. And so they brought those Oryx back. There's a law that you're not allowed to release animals wild unless they're natively born or not natively born in the West or the area. And so the Oryx came over and they were put in a set of cattle pins there on the White Sands Missile Range. I think they brought over, it was two or four, but they brought over mating pairs. And then the offspring were the only ones that were allowed to be let out. They let them out years after that. Now there's thousands of them.
00:08:50
Speaker
I know some of
00:09:13
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, I think they said like, oh, it looks like Africa here. Let's just get some Oryx. You know, they got they got Ibex too, right? They have Ibex, Oryx and Audad down there. Correct. Yeah, they've got the Ibex there on the Florida mountains outside of Deming. They just try not to let them migrate anywhere else where they let Oryx and the Audad still migrate. So those Ibex, if they get off that area, they try and get rid of them as possible.
00:09:37
Speaker
Really? Yeah, but that odd adhunt I did down there was probably one of the funnest hunts I've ever had. You just see a lot of sheep. You're moving a lot. You can't really pattern them. You know, they've got eyes. They can see you from a thousand yards away. It's a really fun hunt. I mean, the day we killed our sheep, we ended up doubling up. We did like 18 miles or something, and it's just up and down. It's not super crazy country, but it's hills, right? So you're gaining 400, 500 feet, then dropping in some canyons.
00:10:04
Speaker
It was just, we were worked over by the time we killed them. And it was so fun. If you like big glass, do you like long range shooting? That's a fun hunt, man. Cause you're, you're really getting to 300 yards is close on those things. It really is. It is odd that are a lot of fun. I grew up, we'd occasionally have them drop down off those mountain, come down onto our place. We'd see a couple of year here and there. They'd come running across the place. They migrate their crazy animal.
00:10:29
Speaker
They are, and they can go to the places they live. They're fun. So they call them poor man sheep. So if you're looking for a hunt, go try and hunt odd-ass down there in New Mexico. They've made it really hard to draw that tag though. Now, the year we drew, we drew as a group, all four of us, and now you can't even draw as a group anymore. If you put it in as a group, you're not gonna draw the tag. You gotta apply individually. So now, I think the odds are like 2% or something. It's gone way down. So it was the last year we drew, it was the year we could really get tags, and they cracked down on it. So now I put in every year, I put in myself and both my boys individually for that hunt.
00:10:58
Speaker
I put him for like a February or March hunt just so if one of us draw we're gonna go hunt sheep for a week. For me I don't care about pulling the trigger I just want to go chase us again it was fun. Oh yeah no I've chased him a couple of times and they're they're pretty crazy spooking and they're gone likely won't see him they'll be in the next county over. Gosh my friend shot gut shot one a little far back with a seven rim back and I dropped mine he got shot his. I swear I tracked that sheep for two miles on my hands and knees and we end up killing it.
00:11:25
Speaker
It ran with those things. You could tell they get killed, but they get chased by lions over in Africa. It is like the toughest animal. It had its guts hanging out one side of them. I mean, it was out and this thing went two miles. I mean, just dripping little bits of blood. And finally we kicked it up and he shot them. And they go days without drinking water. If you ever find places where they've peed on the ground, it'll stain it yellow with how much minerals and stuff is in their urine. They don't drink very much water. Wow. Yeah.
00:11:52
Speaker
They were a cool critter, but yeah, they were, that's what I remember about them is they were tough. Now I like them, you know, a mule deer or an antelope. It was an animal that just, you tell he's getting killed by big old lions and stuff over there and she does tough animals. All right, so now I want to hear about hunting on white sands about these
Oryx Hunting Stories
00:12:10
Speaker
oryx.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, so I've hunted on the White Sands Missile Range three times in my life. I drew an antelope tag on there when I was a youth resident running around in New Mexico and was able to go out there for my first time. That would have been 2016, so I got to go take a pronghorn out of there, and then I came back in 2020. I guess it would have been the 2019-2020. I drew my once-in-a-lifetime tag the last time of the year, February 28th, March 1st, or something like that.
00:12:34
Speaker
So with those Oryx hunts, they're a really short hunt. You get three days, technically two and a half. So when you start that hunt, they have you, everybody come. So you'll have all the Oryx hunters, elk hunters, there's elk hunts going on at the time, pronghorn, any of the hunts are going on that week. They all meet up at a staging area and they go through about a two hour meet where they run you safety on the range.
00:12:53
Speaker
Watch out for unexploded ordnance areas. They have areas that are marked off. Areas that you're not allowed to drive but you can hike areas and drive to get out and look at. A bunch of different things like that. There's big safety. Make sure you know you got to wear your orange, your hunter orange while you're out there. Different rules and stuff like that as well as information about where the oryx and stuff be found in that.
00:13:11
Speaker
So, in New Mexico, is Hunter's Orange required? Is that required for rifle hunting? No, not in the state of New Mexico, but on any of the... Just on the range. ...ranges. So, both on the White Sands and the McGregor Range, part of the list down there, a little bit farther south of White Sands. Yeah, that's like on the southwest corner, right over there, kind of by Arizona, above El Paso. Yeah, just north El Paso.
00:13:32
Speaker
Okay, I was looking at some gear tags over there. So now you say weekend hunts. These hunts are not a typical like five day hunt, right? I think all New Mexico hunts are five days. These ones are only like two or three days, right? On range? Yeah. So they'll begin it Friday. Usually have a meeting that starts around 10. You usually get out of that meeting right there, 11, 30, 12 o'clock. They just tell everybody go. So everybody gets pretty much a fair shake. There's no, well, I'm going to show up at six o'clock in the morning and get out there. It's, we all meet there at the same time. And once the meeting's over, they just release you just from that base camp and everybody
00:14:02
Speaker
it goes out. So you'll have it's usually anywhere from 100 to 150 tags hunting on that place of time and everybody with that exact same got about two roads start leaving off of before they start to feather out. Wow, really? I didn't realize it was that many hunters. I mean, there's that many oryx on range, huh? Yeah, they kill probably probably 1000 a year.
00:14:20
Speaker
Really? Yeah, it seems like everyone who draws that tag is pretty successful. Yeah, so there's odds on that if you don't kill one, not to say you're a bad hunter, but you probably have no clue. I mean, we saw within 10 minutes leaving that and they're standing there a hundred yards off the road. It's just getting out to shoot one. Yeah, they are big white animals. I know they're not hard to see. They don't blend in. I've seen them off rage and it's just like, wow, that does not fit the surroundings.
00:14:45
Speaker
And they're really not very skittish but once they run there they're gone they're pretty hard to catch up a pretty fast for how big they are so I always wonder like I draw that tax higher guide like you see you're saying I'm not gonna need a guide if I'm any but capable on that tag.
00:15:00
Speaker
I would say, I mean, most people, I'd say 75% of those hunters are killed out in the first. Really? That second day is pretty sparse of you seeing. Well, it's passing the occasional person. Like I usually stayed till the second day because I'm wanting to see as much stuff, try and find that one that's just special, something about him. And so on both my hunts, we stayed till that second day and just tried to find the one that had something that just stood out like that's one. He's got some characteristic that I really like. So now are you having to hunt? Are you basically road hunting or are you getting out and glassing or how are you hunting these things?
00:15:30
Speaker
So you can do it both ways, so it depends where you're at. So some of the ranges you can get up into the finger hills and kind of get up into the canyons and get some glassing. Others, it's getting up on the bed of the pickup to get some elevation glass across the flats. All of mine, we drive, find an area, do some road hunting. Most time we're finding a place, we kind of sneak up and get into an area where, you know, you kind of figure them big ones are probably going to try and hide somewhere. So you're trying to find those areas that I can hide in here and that truck's not see me when they drive by. Because most people road hunt that.
00:15:57
Speaker
Okay. All right. I have no issues. I'm going to hunt them, however they tell me the best way to hunt them. I'm not a guy who's like, I'm going to have to go back back into this place to be like, if they're telling me that you're going to go on base and the best way to hunt them is from the pickup truck and get up on it. Hunt smarter, not harder. If that's the way people are doing it, I want to do it however they're doing it in that area. That makes sense, because it's probably hard to get elevation. You're probably getting up. I can't even imagine putting some ladders in the truck bed and getting some more elevation.
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's very common to have ladders in the back of the truck for glassing. Your only elevation is there's a single mountain line that runs through the center of White Sands and that's about the only place you can find some other than that it's just the occasional hill here and there that you're using and then it depends what range but there's four ranges they allow you to hunt. You've got the stallions your lower range where the Trinity site is or they drop the atomic bomb.
00:16:48
Speaker
Then you've got the Red Canyon is the other side of the hill from it. Rhodes Canyon is just north of there. Then there's the actual White Sands where the sand is. And then just north of there is Small Rain. Right there we get into the mountain pass to go to Las Vegas. So are the Oryx bigger where they drop a nuclear bomb? They're not.
00:17:04
Speaker
Thing I was just hoping they got a little bit of that radioactive and got a little bit bigger and got bigger antlers now, okay No, it's too many Marvel movies. It's pretty funny with those oryx your bigger ones are usually your female So the taller they are as you know, really? Yeah, so the females will have a lot thinner of a horn but they're gonna be a lot longer so your records on length which most of them go off of like I think SCI is length and like the base is it and your length is all gonna be out of your males you'll see 38 38 while your males are usually 36 you might catch a 38
00:17:32
Speaker
Okay. Is there a, like you, is there a sex rule on hunting these things or no? It's just, okay. So there's, so there's, I didn't know that. So I always thought I was going to be looking for a bull. They call them bulls and cows. What do they call them? Yeah. That's as far as I know. They just call them cows. So there's no like, you're not worried. Like you shoot a cow. You're not like, dang it. It's. Nope. Honestly, you shoot a cow. You might even be lucky to pick up a new state record. You never know. Really? Really? Yeah. I guess you couldn't really tell once you break it. Once you get them mounted, you can't tell.
00:17:59
Speaker
No, you really can't. People have been around them a lot. You can kind of learn to tell by looking at their basis. So at the basis, if they're a female, you'll be able to see each individual ring almost real easily with the naked eye or with the males. Those rings kind of start to come together, real squeezed together and don't look like definitive rings up the lower end.
00:18:16
Speaker
Okay, gotcha, gotcha. All right, so you got an Oryx, what caliber you shoot, what rifle you shoot for these things? I shoot a .338 WinMag. Oh, so you're bringing all the horsepower. It was the first rifle I ever bought. I turned 18 and went to a gun store and they had it sit and they bought it. Oh man, I'm too much of a puss for that thing.
00:18:33
Speaker
Honestly, I've shot 270s and 30.6 is way more than this rifle. Oh, is it broken? You got a small break on it? It's an old rifle. It's a Ruger Mark 77, except it's the older version of the Tang safe. So it's got an old school original Browning bosses, which is a over barrel clamp on muzzle brake can be tunable. Okay. The real goofy looking thing, but it's been on there for 40 years, so I might as well
00:18:57
Speaker
That's awesome. I actually traded a Mark 77 243 this year with the red butt pad and the tang safety for a dirt bike for my kid. I had three or four 243s in the safe already, and he wanted a dirt bike, and I was like, I'll trade, buddy. All right, so now we've got a dollar. We know how you're hunting them. You shoot a 338 win magazine, you said?
00:19:17
Speaker
Yes, sir. You got all the horsepower in the world. Now, ready, set, go. They let you go from the meeting. What's going on? So we kind of had some areas picked out. So when you first get there, they give you a map and it shows the areas you're allowed to hunt in and the boundary thing. So we kind of looked at it and we had a guy with us that had been on quite a few hunts out there. I think he'd been putting in for the probably 20 years that they've been doing that Oryx hunt now or 25 years or whatever. He'd been putting in the entire time and he'd probably been out there 12 times helping people out. Never drawn the tag himself. He'd been on 12 or 13 hunts out there.
00:19:46
Speaker
So real quick, I want to clarify something. On White Sands, when you leave this meeting, are there subunits for everybody, or is everyone going to get the whole base? Everyone gets the whole area. So they have different shooting ranges, they call them. So it'll be a boundary within that whole range of White Sands. So you've got four or five different ones that'll all be connected by road here and there, and they'll just put combs out on the road and draw you a map. So are you limited to the nuclear area only, or you get the whole base, all five areas?
00:20:16
Speaker
You get one area. You get one area. Okay. So that's a little bit more. Okay. So you have, so there's five, now you don't draw the area. You draw white sands and they give you the area when you're, they get there. You draw the area. So when you look at it, it says white sands and it'll have an area coat for different areas. Oh, okay. Okay. So you draw one. So there's a hundred of 40, hundreds, 150, hundreds in this meeting, but there's five units and maybe 25 guys per unit coming out of this meeting. So each individual weekend will be specifically for one of those
00:20:43
Speaker
Oh, okay. That makes sense. So you're going to get one, one range for that weekend, not five different ranges. Okay. Correct. Because 150 guys are going to the same area. Okay. Yep. And it's, it's a large area, but you are going to see most of the time you're going to have someone crossing you on the road across the reef from you that.
00:21:00
Speaker
Okay. All right. So now I've got that clear. You got 238 good. Also with white sands, there's a, they have time set on when you can be within the rain. So like starts at 30 minutes after sunrise and you got to be out with 30 minutes before sunset. So they have a time limit that's set. So you can't be in there. Can't camp in there. Nothing like that.
00:21:18
Speaker
Okay, all right, so now you've got this guy, he's been plying for 25 years, never drew it, here's this kid, who just drew it. The first one he drew, was this the real Oryx, or not real Oryx, was this the full horned Oryx, or the broken off Oryx? Which tag is this one? It was my once in a life to tag the horn. Okay, so the first one you drew it, how old are you, 18? I'm 20. You're 20, you drew this tag. Good for you. I guess it would have been 19 when I drew it, I was 20 whenever I shot it.
00:21:39
Speaker
All right. So now you've taken off with these guys and supply over 25 years. So I'm sure he's giving you a ton of crap for him. Never drawing it, but here you go. So we kind of look up a couple of areas and we go, I mean, as soon as we leave, I mean, we're maybe a quarter of a mile from where we had that meeting and everybody's stopping on the side of the road and the group of five or six of them out there. I mean, we're out of the meeting, maybe five minutes. All of a sudden we hear the first shot. Someone shoots one right there next to that base camp.
00:22:04
Speaker
Just keep driving and I mean it's a big line of cars Everybody's just lined up if they're not stopping at that first one the next door pops up someone's pulling over to the shot at it So you're just trying to get out of that craziness of them first few people shoot stuff. So we're just hauling out of there We're the probably fifth or sixth person to actually drive out of there. Some people hesitate wait Just like let's let it clear out. We're like, let's just get it drive to the far side get away from
00:22:24
Speaker
because most people are going to see those first few and get distracted so they're not going to make it to that far end right away let's get over there find us an area and kind of see what we find and so we haul out and we get up into a road that goes up a canyon he'd killed one in there four or five years prior and so he said well we'll go up in here we my niece killed one here is a great area find one
00:22:43
Speaker
We got up in there and we see a group of them. We're just picking, trying to find a big one. Especially having him, he's seen quite a pretty good at judging. There was one big one in there and the way this country is, you have lots of, when it rains, you get those flooding, flash floods that just erode and make random canyons everywhere. See what looks like a flat way to go is all of a sudden you got a canyon at six, seven. You got to try and get around or get down to come back up the other side. It's pretty tough getting to them and we get up closer and peek our head over and somehow in our hike over there or someone else drove up something, but
00:23:10
Speaker
They get spooked, go up over the mountain and cross to the other side where we can't go aft. So we go and make it back, pick up, do a little more watching and find some others. We come up and I probably put the scope on two or three of them. They were good ones and they just weren't the one that I had in my head. I didn't think they were big enough work. They didn't, you know, just give me that feeling like this is the one. And so we end up finishing up that after probably saw four or five of them killed by other. And you get back to base camp at 50 and said that hadn't already got hauled off that are getting ready to haul off. You drive by the checkpoint to check a vehicle out. You don't have one to better the pickup for that.
00:23:40
Speaker
make it back to the hotel for the night get a good night's rest get up the next morning and go back in there and kind of go to that same area in hopes of finding that big scene beginning of day and we get up in there and we start hiking around we find a couple of dead heads walk up we're maybe 20 yards from broken he's just standing there crazy thing he's ever seen his life dead looking at us away from
00:23:59
Speaker
And we start coming around the ridge there and we look off I'll probably 300 yards and there's there's a nice one there He's pretty tall and we decided we would get a little closer try and get a good shot on him Get some of the brush just in the way get up a little closer and he kind of walks off and another one comes out behind him this one I mean one I think pretty horns massive just so I get up and I throw the rifle up on shoot sticks and pull the trigger for the first time and gut shot him I mean 150 yards a killer with
00:24:22
Speaker
I've never had that bad of a shot. I don't know what the heck he runs off little ways We probably chased him for about a half a mile get up Finally get another shot on him and I shoot again and this time I hit him in the shoulder But it's high and like something off So we start running after him again to try and get another shot off and I noticed my scopes rattling Oh No, I'm like what the heck is this the scope shouldn't be rattling. I just put a new scope on it and mounted it up I've been shooting dimes at the house at three four hundred yards the rifle shooting great. I
00:24:46
Speaker
I locked it. Is there blue lock tight on those bolts? There was. Really? So you've bought the Leopold one. It's already got the blue lock tight on it for you. Oh, I put it on too. What the issue was is when they built it, it was slightly too tall. So the hole was slightly larger than the scope. So the scope was tight, but then it just, as it sat there, it was able to kind of move itself. It barely got enough wiggle, but it was enough wiggle that I was off.
00:25:10
Speaker
24 inches left and 8 inches low on the first shot and the second shot was about 18 inches high third shot I took hit him directly in the neck went just clean through his neck didn't affect just ran off some more we chased him down a little farther I get a fourth shot on him this time I hit him in the foot
00:25:27
Speaker
Gosh right there in the foot this puts him down. He's laying there. He's got holes in him. I feel terrible This is this isn't what I liked I want to kill him quick and I'm sitting here I've had to shoot four times now I have to put a fifth the problem so we get up closer and I get the rifle on and put one through his heart dead I'm kicking myself. I've got butt fever for the whole time. I'm just like this is awful this whole thing My right was not in great shape and now I've heard an animal which is something I never liked to do I'm a I like to make it clean and quick don't like him to suffer and
00:25:52
Speaker
And so we get him cut up, but what we forgot to do is we left all the packs in the pickup. So now we just have a pack on us and all I got is the pocket knife I've carried in my pocket since I was 16. Probably only sharp at maybe once in that whole time. Dull as all get out trying to...
00:26:07
Speaker
cut him up at first for my dad can make the two and a half mile pack from the pickup with all four packs back animal, which I mean, luckily the packs are frames. We weren't really prepared to hike him out too awful far. I think I had an old King's camouflage. They have a pack. It's got a wire frame. It doesn't carry weight very much. Especially the corks. Yeah. And then 400, 500 pounds, like a size of a cow, right? Cow elk.
00:26:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah, you might be a little bigger. You might be closer to 800 on a real fat bull. Just really how good the country is. It's real good green year and they're just able to gorge themselves. Wow. That hadn't happened a while down there, but there have been in the past. Wow. I had no idea that they were more like that 500 pound rate. Wow. Yeah. So let's say quite a few of them are and that's probably your average, but there is some, you get those random ones that found them a honey hole where they just gorge themselves and got as fat as possible. Gotcha.
00:26:55
Speaker
All right, so you got him down. You got him, you got him killed. I think it's important. I think anyone who's listening to this right now, for one, I respect your honesty, right? I think anyone who's listening to this right now, who's hunted for any period of time has experienced this same thing in some way, shape, or form, right? Like when you hunt, things are never going to, I mean, they'll be perfect sometimes, but sometimes it's just not going to be perfect. And at that point you have a job just to freaking kill that animal. Oh yeah.
00:27:19
Speaker
at that point like things have gone wrong you know and in the moment it's just chaos right and it's happened to us all but you have a responsibility to put the animal down and get it killed you know somehow whether you're putting one up its butt or what you're doing i mean yeah i shot a deer one time and i hit him 400 yards and that deer i hit him and he dropped and hit the ground i mean
00:27:40
Speaker
bam right there and i packed it was about thirty minutes or two they just laying there dead and i got i swear this is my kids were like twelve thousand foot elevation to build here we back up we hike over to him and that deer stands up and starts running and it was like going towards the canyon i had to put one right up his keister and put him down and i had hit that deer just a little bit back.
00:28:00
Speaker
And it fell over and died right there, but it wasn't dead. I remember walking up to it and his leg was straight. I'm like, that's kind of funny. And that deer laid there for 30 minutes and stood up. And I had to do, you know, I had to do it to kill him. We don't strive for that. We strive for ethical shots. But sometimes things go wrong and you just got to do it. And I appreciate you just being honest with it, not just, oh yeah, I went out there 500 yards and just poked him double lung and he was dead. It's just sometimes it doesn't work that way, you know? It doesn't, yeah. Sometimes there's a difference between being a, you know, I tell people all the time, like, you got to be a killer, you know? Sometimes you just got to kill.
00:28:31
Speaker
Sometimes when things hit the fan, you gotta start loading and sending things down there because it's just, it happened. It's not something I strive for or want to have happen, but it happens to all of us. You know, you don't have for long enough, you're going to have issues like this. So I appreciate you telling the truth. All right. So now you pack, you pack this sucker back to the truck or what?
00:28:46
Speaker
Yeah, so we're getting cut up and split up the weight as good as possible. I mean, me having a slight frame pack, I'd throw as much weight on me as possible. Had an old army frame pack to pack as heavy as it could get. And then my dad carried out the head and the cape. He's just got an army duffel bag to see on all them as they got their clothes. It doesn't carry weight very well. It's a couple of pairs of t-shirts and a sleeping bag. And we get him packed back and loaded in the truck. So that hunt was in March. It was probably 80 days out that day. So we were trying to get him to truck as soon as possible. Get that milled down, get out of here.
00:29:14
Speaker
So you took the, are you, did you shoulder mount this animal or what'd you do with it? I did. I've got him shoulder mounted at home. Okay. Yeah. There's a really good taxidermist there in Los Angeles. He does a lot of those. You know, being my once in a lifetime, I was probably out of
Preserving an Oryx Trophy
00:29:27
Speaker
shoulder mounting. I'm not, I'm never going to get one again. Little did I know six months later, I'd have a second Oryx tag to spend. I felt I had to.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm conflicted on what I'm going to do with my time. I'm going to draw that tag, I hope, in my lifetime. I think I want to do like a rug, like a full rug on the wall. It would just look so cool. And then do the euros look bitching. Oh, they do. They do look really cool. But at the same time, it's like, man, it would be nice to shoulder mount it too. But man, I think having that thing like on the wall, like it just looked really clean, big rug.
00:29:56
Speaker
It's hard to go wrong on those Oryx, whether you do it a rug and a hero mount or just the pelt, like that zebra style face. And then you got almost like a horse's body, but it's got those gray
Future Hunting Aspirations
00:30:08
Speaker
hairs. Yeah, the grays and the stripes. Yeah, that's really neat, man.
00:30:12
Speaker
That's awesome, dude. I'm stoked. It gives me encouragement that I'll draw this tag someday. You drew it twice in a year. I did. How did those eat? I heard some of the best tasting meat out there. Oh, yeah. Most of that meat was gone the first six months. I mean, it's just such good meat. I eat as much of it as I can. I hope somebody else back home gets one so I can get some more of it.
00:30:31
Speaker
Really? Yeah, I've heard that's really good meat. It's not gamey, which is a prized country they're in. It's just raw, hardly grass, no water. And they come out and they don't taste really tender with no fat content in them. Dark. It's really good. I've ate it all kinds of. That's awesome. Well.
00:30:46
Speaker
With that said, where can we find you? You want anyone to find you? Are you public? Are you private on Instagram? What's up with that?
Connor's Personal Life and Social Media
00:30:52
Speaker
I'm public on Instagram. I'd have to look at my handle. I'm not very active. Never been in my strong suit. They don't got to follow you. Just trying to give you... It's conner.cocks44. I post on occasion. Get to see a lot of travel photos. I travel all around the world with a job. What do you do? I work for a company that makes livestock research. I'm their installation repair technician. Oh, same thing that... Yeah, okay.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, so I've been to 44 U.S. dates in eight countries so far, and I've got a trip to Australia and to Mexico. Awesome. So are you married, a single dude, or? I'm single, yeah. All right, so any ladies out there listening to this thing, you want to hit Connor up, he's gave you his handle, and hit him up, and you can be a world traveler eating Oryx. Yeah, eating Oryx and traveling the world. Awesome, dude. Well, days are coming on. Yeah, glad to do it. Let's do it again. Let's do it again. When I draw the Oryx tag, I'm going to be hitting you up, and it'll be good. I'll be there with you. We'll get you a good one.
Closing and Call to Action
00:31:44
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Tricer Podcast. Do us a favor, or like and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on. Give us a follow on Instagram and Facebook at tricerusa. And go check out all of our innovative gear at www.tricerusa.com. Until next time, shoot straight, have fun, and always put God first.