Q Creek is located in Central Wyoming's Shirley Mountains and encompasses 570,000 acres. It offers hunting for elk, deer and antelope, as well as trout fishing. Rodgers says he and a group of friends have fished at Q Creek over Labor Day weekend for the last five years. This year, he decided to take one day for hunting and applied for an antelope tag. When he was successful in the draw, he purchased an over-the-counter mule deer tag, just in case. The day he spent hunting with guide Tad Anderson was from first light to dusk. They stalked several good bucks of both species and at day's end, Anderson put him in position to take a P&Y antelope as he moved from one pasture to another. "We used a decoy and belly crawled quite a ways," he reports. Rodgers says that he had never hunted antelope by spotting and stalking before.
"Tad's knowledge of the land and animals, and his hunting intuition, were exceptional. His willingness to go the extra mile to give me the shot opportunity will not be forgotten," says Rodgers. He says the antelope are abundant and in excellent condition. "We made 12 to 15 stalks up to about 100 yards and then the antelope would take off."
Rodgers says the hunt was a bit of a workout for someone in fair shape, and he recommends rugged gloves and pants, as there's a lot of crawling involved. He's still digging cactus spines out of his hands. The mule deer hunting is physically tougher, with more hiking at higher elevations, per a cousin of Rodgers who tried it on the same trip.
Rodgers notes that Q Creek is especially eager to work with kids. "They taught both my son, and my nephew, (11 and 12) to fly cast, took them on hikes, educated them about........(continued)
