Big Game
Antilocapra americana
Photo: NPS Photo via Wikimedia Commons (PD) · PD · Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Conservation status
Least ConcernTag difficulty (general)
Mostly drawVaries by state and unit.
Methods generally used
Pronghorn are not antelope — they're the last surviving member of an otherwise extinct family, Antilocapridae, that's been on this continent for 20 million years. They evolved to outrun American cheetahs that disappeared at the end of the last Ice Age, which is why a pronghorn can sustain 50 miles per hour for several miles and burst past 60 in a sprint. A mature buck weighs 100 to 140 pounds with a tan-and-white coat, bold white throat bands, and black-cheek face markings. Both sexes grow horns (not antlers) — bucks carry a forward-curving prong and a hooked tip; does carry small straight spikes. The horns shed an outer sheath each fall and regrow over the bone core.
They live in open sagebrush sea — flat to rolling country where eyesight is everything. Pronghorn eyes are positioned for a 320-degree field of view and resolve detail at distances that would take a human binoculars. They graze on sage, forbs, and rabbitbrush, and they need open ground to use their speed. The rut runs in September; bucks defend either a harem of does or a stretch of preferred habitat. They will not jump fences — they crawl under them — which makes barbed-wire fences the single biggest barrier to migration across the West. Numbers are stable to growing across most core range.
Pronghorn live in the shortgrass and sagebrush West — Wyoming holds roughly half the continental population, with strong herds in Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho. Smaller huntable populations exist in California, North Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. They're absent from forested country east of the Plains. Sonoran pronghorn — a subspecies — survive in small numbers in Arizona and northern Mexico and are not hunted.
Pronghorn need open country — sagebrush flats, shortgrass prairie, high desert basins between 3,000 and 7,000 feet. They avoid timber and broken topography. Sage is both their primary winter forage and the cover they bed in. Migration corridors between summer and winter range can run 100 miles or more, and the chokepoints — where development, fences, or highways pinch the corridor — are the conservation priority on the species.
Rifle seasons usually run in September and October in open sagebrush country. The game is glassing miles of country from a high point, picking out a buck, and making a stalk that uses every fold of ground. Flat-shooting cartridges in the .243 to .270 range are standard for shots that commonly stretch from 250 to 400 yards.
Archery seasons typically open in August or early September before the rut. The dominant approach is sitting a pit blind or popup ground blind over a stock tank or natural water source in arid country, since pronghorn pattern hard on water in late summer. Decoying a rutting buck with a buck or doe decoy also works in the right unit.
Muzzleloader seasons are offered in some states between archery and rifle. Tactics blend the two: a pit-blind ambush at water if conditions allow, or a careful stalk to within 150 yards in open country. Check your state hunting page for what's legal on sights and projectiles in your unit.
Legal methods, weapons, and seasons vary by state and unit — confirm with the issuing agency before you hunt.
Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-3.0) · CC-BY-SA-3.0
Mr. Satterly via Wikimedia Commons (CC0) · CC0
9 states