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Concealing your vehicle

When the water hole that your blind is on is in view of the road, whether it's 500 yrds or 2 miles do you need to hide your vehicle? Cover it with a tarp? Does it have any effect on the pronghorn coming in? What are some thoughts? Sorry for all of the somewhat "basic/dumb" questions guys. This is my first blind hunt for pronghorn and in a trophy area that I will probably never draw again. So I just want to be sure that I've covered all of my bases. Thanks for your time!!!!

If it's not moving they tend to watch for a while then forget it. put the front toward the blind.

I try to park so is something blocking the vehicle from a 360 view. Might be a tree or some sage or a slight dip in the road. If there is a road, the critters have seen vehicles before and is when the vehicle is moving then stops that seems to get the attention of the critters. A stopped vehicle that remains stopped seems to be forgotten in a few minutes unless a door opens or slams or honks. A moving vehicle gets less attention as long as keeps moving and is not honking or blaring a radio. As a kid, had some success slowing down enough for my brother to bail out into a ditch then sneak in for a shot while I drove away. I would park so the windshield is not directly facing the setting sun or rising sun as that can create some bright reflections.

I have had Antelope come in or try to many times while setting up Blinds with the truck right next to the waterhole so no need to worry. However if you put a reflective sun shade screen in the windshield try to face the truck so that they can not see it as my experience is that the reflection of the sun off it scare the daylights out of them.

It's more about distance than covering since most places it's very hard to conceal a truck or SUV from the eagle eye antelope.

So if you can park further away and walk vs. driving close.

BTW Yes antelope come to water when setting up blinds but once season starts the big bucks are much more wary than a average buck.

If your from California you need to cover the license plates - both of them.

+1 LKH. Once it's parked it becomes part of the landscape. Deer react the same way most of the time in my neck of the woods. Just park it a few hundred yards away if possible and with the lowest cross section possible and don't worry about it again, the antelope definitely won't.

I parked down a road near a waterhole one time we hunt for elk, rushing to get into my ground blind, and I look over, and a nice big 6X6 bull is coming in the same route I had just walked, and it was standing right next to my truck.

If the antelope are used to seeing vehicles driving around (ranch trucks, oilfield trucks etc) it may not matter much but if it's public land that gets hunted very hard it may matter a lot! I usually use my dirt bike and hide it in tall sage or the bottom of a draw.

I think it depends on the goats, and whether they are pressured or not. Last year I hunted in a pasture that had two ponds and a water trough. The permanent blind was on the trough, so I parked my bright red Ford between the two ponds to keep the goats off them. During one of my stand-up-and-stretch-and -look-around periods I saw a doe walk within twenty yards of my truck. That afternoon at almost dark, there was a buck watering at the pond when I walked up to my truck. He was probably seventy yards or so away from it. There is nothing set in stone about what an antelope (or most any other animal) will do. This was a private land setting, but I've seen them stop and stare on public when my truck was slowly driving from a couple hundred yards. When I stopped to glass them, they moved on.

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