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Stalking quarry joy of pronghorn hunt
Ed Dentry, Rockymountainenws.com
October 11, 2002
Photo by Tom Pojar
A handsome pronghorn buck surveys his domain. With the rut in full steam bucks typically are at full gallop much of the time corralling does with wanderlust or chasing off interlopers trying to poach from their harems. For eating, many hunters voice a preference for does.
NORTH PARK - Some of nature's grandest theater was playing out across a wide expanse of aromatic sagebrush. A handsome pronghorn buck with tall, black horns was laboring to keep 30 does herded up and out of the clutches of a half-dozen lesser pronghorn bucks.
The rut was in full steam and the buck at full gallop much of the time. When he wasn't busy corralling does with wanderlust or chasing off interlopers, he had those two suspicious lumps hunkering in the sage to puzzle over.
From the hunkering place, it seemed unlikely to a rifle hunter and her companion that the peripatetic creatures ever would come close enough for a judicious shot. But the wait in pronghorn country is inspirational enough on its own merits. The open spaces they prefer endow visitors with spiritual balm, while offering up a symphony of bull elk bugles, coyote howls and foxes barking.
The quarry was not the buck, which was impressive enough to excite any seeker of trophies, but a doe. "They're the best eaters," said the rancher, who generously granted the pair permission to prowl and hunt.
The problem was, the one big herd buck seemed to have cornered the market on does for miles around.
Compared with elk and deer, pronghorns get minor billing among Colorado's big-game species. "They've kind of taken the back seat," said pronghorn biologist Tom Pojar of the Colorado Division of Wildlife, who has been studying mule deer population dynamics instead for the past five years.
Yet no species of hooved animal more fittingly defines the state's place in what remains of the wild West.
Pronghorns are creatures of high plains and prairie. They are equipped with telescopic eyesight, legs capable of 60-mph bursts and an almost mythic face. There is nothing quite like the beast some call an antelope, some call a goat.
"I like to say with tongue in cheek that their closest relative is themselves," Pojar said. "They just don't have any close relatives for millions of years."
A native of western North America that is a unique species in all the world, the pronghorn has so befuddled attempts to categorize it down through history that even its scientific name, antilocapra, is incorrect.
"It means antelope-goat, which is really a misnomer," Pojar said.
Neither antelope nor goat, pronghorns were taken for both by plainsmen and settlers, who couldn't agree what they were. They still are described as "pronghorn antelope" by wildlife agencies in many states, although Pojar said the Division of Wildlife is phasing out the term "antelope."
The pronghorn's special niche in nature is reflected in its unique, virtually hassle-free management history. In short, while deer, elk and other hooved wildlife come burdened with issues ranging from chronic wasting disease to herd-size controversies, pronghorns lope merrily along with hardly a hitch. They even responded to drought this year with slightly higher fawn survival than usual.
Pronghorns don't get chronic wasting disease. Other diseases, such as blue tongue, haven't bothered them in years. When drought kills off the forbs they like to eat, they switch to sagebrush, which most animals find unpalatable except as emergency rations. Pronghorns feed on much of the same range as cattle, but they tend to eat things cattle don't eat. They are nearly trouble-free.
"They're sort of on cruise control," said Pojar, who thought of one minor controversy that does rear its head at times: "A few wheat farmers think pronghorns spread bindweed."
Bindweed is a noxious weed that arrived from Russia in the 1920s. With taproots 20 feet deep and seeds that can remain viable in the soil for up to 30 years, it can strangle wheat crops. Pronghorns can spread bindweed by eating and eliminating the hardy seeds. But its spread is more likely due to farm machinery than pronghorns, Pojar said.
Though they might not have the high-profile celebrity ranking that elk enjoy among hunters, pronghorns do have a devoted following among Colorado hunters, most of whom are residents of the state. The number of hunting licenses, each issued by drawing, fluctuates but hovers around 10,000.
Hunting seasons usually are brief, lasting a week or less, and are held at different dates in different game units, mostly in September and October. Hunters seek antelope from the high sage-covered hills of northwest Colorado to mountain valleys and the lowest grasslands and fields of the eastern plains.
Pronghorns in Colorado number about 57,000 this year and typically number about 60,000, Pojar said. The current population is slightly depressed because of a decrease in the size of the state's biggest pronghorn herd, on public land east of Craig.
"That's no accident," Pojar said. The Craig herd had grown heavily overpopulated, and the division trimmed its numbers through liberal allocations of hunting licenses over the past several years. Now that the herd has been trimmed, pronghorn hunting licenses, never in great abundance, have declined by a few thousand.
One of the licenses went to Lygia Brown of Colorado Springs, who was enjoying her first antelope hunt, for a doe, on North Park's sage hills.
"I like this better than the closed-in feeling you get hunting elk in the woods," she said. At last, she surrendered any notion that a doe in the harem might wander off from the jealous vigil of the big herd buck and settled on a stalk elsewhere.
She climbed a sage-covered hill, keeping on the blind side of another buck and its harem of five does she had spotted with binoculars. At the top of the hill, predator and prey met eye to eye.
The rifle shot that rang out found no place to echo, so vast was the land.
dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-5481.
Ed Dentry, Rockymountainenws.com
October 11, 2002
Photo by Tom Pojar
A handsome pronghorn buck surveys his domain. With the rut in full steam bucks typically are at full gallop much of the time corralling does with wanderlust or chasing off interlopers trying to poach from their harems. For eating, many hunters voice a preference for does.
NORTH PARK - Some of nature's grandest theater was playing out across a wide expanse of aromatic sagebrush. A handsome pronghorn buck with tall, black horns was laboring to keep 30 does herded up and out of the clutches of a half-dozen lesser pronghorn bucks.
The rut was in full steam and the buck at full gallop much of the time. When he wasn't busy corralling does with wanderlust or chasing off interlopers, he had those two suspicious lumps hunkering in the sage to puzzle over.
From the hunkering place, it seemed unlikely to a rifle hunter and her companion that the peripatetic creatures ever would come close enough for a judicious shot. But the wait in pronghorn country is inspirational enough on its own merits. The open spaces they prefer endow visitors with spiritual balm, while offering up a symphony of bull elk bugles, coyote howls and foxes barking.
The quarry was not the buck, which was impressive enough to excite any seeker of trophies, but a doe. "They're the best eaters," said the rancher, who generously granted the pair permission to prowl and hunt.
The problem was, the one big herd buck seemed to have cornered the market on does for miles around.
Compared with elk and deer, pronghorns get minor billing among Colorado's big-game species. "They've kind of taken the back seat," said pronghorn biologist Tom Pojar of the Colorado Division of Wildlife, who has been studying mule deer population dynamics instead for the past five years.
Yet no species of hooved animal more fittingly defines the state's place in what remains of the wild West.
Pronghorns are creatures of high plains and prairie. They are equipped with telescopic eyesight, legs capable of 60-mph bursts and an almost mythic face. There is nothing quite like the beast some call an antelope, some call a goat.
"I like to say with tongue in cheek that their closest relative is themselves," Pojar said. "They just don't have any close relatives for millions of years."
A native of western North America that is a unique species in all the world, the pronghorn has so befuddled attempts to categorize it down through history that even its scientific name, antilocapra, is incorrect.
"It means antelope-goat, which is really a misnomer," Pojar said.
Neither antelope nor goat, pronghorns were taken for both by plainsmen and settlers, who couldn't agree what they were. They still are described as "pronghorn antelope" by wildlife agencies in many states, although Pojar said the Division of Wildlife is phasing out the term "antelope."
The pronghorn's special niche in nature is reflected in its unique, virtually hassle-free management history. In short, while deer, elk and other hooved wildlife come burdened with issues ranging from chronic wasting disease to herd-size controversies, pronghorns lope merrily along with hardly a hitch. They even responded to drought this year with slightly higher fawn survival than usual.
Pronghorns don't get chronic wasting disease. Other diseases, such as blue tongue, haven't bothered them in years. When drought kills off the forbs they like to eat, they switch to sagebrush, which most animals find unpalatable except as emergency rations. Pronghorns feed on much of the same range as cattle, but they tend to eat things cattle don't eat. They are nearly trouble-free.
"They're sort of on cruise control," said Pojar, who thought of one minor controversy that does rear its head at times: "A few wheat farmers think pronghorns spread bindweed."
Bindweed is a noxious weed that arrived from Russia in the 1920s. With taproots 20 feet deep and seeds that can remain viable in the soil for up to 30 years, it can strangle wheat crops. Pronghorns can spread bindweed by eating and eliminating the hardy seeds. But its spread is more likely due to farm machinery than pronghorns, Pojar said.
Though they might not have the high-profile celebrity ranking that elk enjoy among hunters, pronghorns do have a devoted following among Colorado hunters, most of whom are residents of the state. The number of hunting licenses, each issued by drawing, fluctuates but hovers around 10,000.
Hunting seasons usually are brief, lasting a week or less, and are held at different dates in different game units, mostly in September and October. Hunters seek antelope from the high sage-covered hills of northwest Colorado to mountain valleys and the lowest grasslands and fields of the eastern plains.
Pronghorns in Colorado number about 57,000 this year and typically number about 60,000, Pojar said. The current population is slightly depressed because of a decrease in the size of the state's biggest pronghorn herd, on public land east of Craig.
"That's no accident," Pojar said. The Craig herd had grown heavily overpopulated, and the division trimmed its numbers through liberal allocations of hunting licenses over the past several years. Now that the herd has been trimmed, pronghorn hunting licenses, never in great abundance, have declined by a few thousand.
One of the licenses went to Lygia Brown of Colorado Springs, who was enjoying her first antelope hunt, for a doe, on North Park's sage hills.
"I like this better than the closed-in feeling you get hunting elk in the woods," she said. At last, she surrendered any notion that a doe in the harem might wander off from the jealous vigil of the big herd buck and settled on a stalk elsewhere.
She climbed a sage-covered hill, keeping on the blind side of another buck and its harem of five does she had spotted with binoculars. At the top of the hill, predator and prey met eye to eye.
The rifle shot that rang out found no place to echo, so vast was the land.
dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-5481.
