Neander97 / Historical Trivia: Although often referred to as an antelope, the pronghorn (Antilocapra americanas) a hoofed animal native to North America, is not a true antelope and as such is classified in a separate family, the Antilocapridae.

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The Pronghorn Antelope: Antilocapra americanas

Although often referred to as an antelope, the pronghorn (Antilocapra americanas) a hoofed animal native to North America, is not a true antelope and as such is classified in a separate family, the Antilocapridae. All true antelope are native to Africa and Asia. The pronghorn is the sole member of Antilocapridae, which dates back some 20 million years to the middle Miocene period.

A medium sized animal, the pronghorn stands about 3 to 3.5 feet tall at the shoulders, and averages from 4 to 4.75 feet in length. Males weigh from 80 to 160 pounds and females from 70 to 170 pounds. It has a relatively small head with a small muzzle, very large eyes, and long pointed ears. The coloration of its upper parts varies from reddish brown to tan, and its underparts, belly, rump, and two bands across its neck are white. Males have a distinctive broad, black band that runs from the eyes, down the snout to the nose, and a black crescent across the neck. The pronghorn's most distinctive feature is its pair of dark black, forked horns. Each horn is bony core covered with a hard sheath, which shed annually after the breeding season. The horn increase in size each they grow back. Both males and females have horns, although the female's are typically smaller.

The pronghorn lives on the grasslands of southwestern Canada, the western United States, and northern Mexico. In the United States it typically inhabits areas of open grasslands and/or areas comprised of mixed bunch grass and sagebrush growth. It feeds on a variety of vegetation, including shrubs, grasses, cacti, and weeds. While the pronghorn can, if necessary, obtain all the moisture it needs from this diet, it will drink freely when water is available.

When it senses danger, the pronghorn flashes a warning signal, visible for several miles, by raising the hairs of its white rump. The pronghorn's large eyes have a wide field of vision, and can detect motion at distances of four miles or more. It is the fastest animal in the Western Hemisphere. While it typically obtains speeds of 40 miles per hour, the pronghorn can run at speeds in excess of 60 miles an hour for short bursts. It can leap up to 20 feet in a single bound. Surprisingly enough, given the arid nature of its habitat, the pronghorn is an excellent swimmer.

The pronghorn was the largest game animal, regularly, available to the Native Americans of the Great Basin region. In the days before the horse, harsh environmental pressures prevented the Shoshoni, Bannock, Ute, Paiute, and Gosiute peoples of the Great Basin, whose largest permanent residential unit was the nuclear family, from developing true political organizations. During the summer these family units moved about independently, and engaged in hunter-gather patterns of subsistence. In the winter these family units grouped together into small, temporary, village units, typically comprised of from two to ten families, seldom numbering more 50 individuals. The assemblage of several village units to conduct communal jackrabbit and/or antelope drives marked the only occasion at which these peoples gathered together in groups larger than the temporary winter village. The antelope drive, which seldom lasted more than two or three weeks and was normally only held once a year. Such drives were led by skilled hunters thought to possess powers beneficial to the hunt. The entire assemblage would scattered across the countryside forming rough circle, then drove the game inward until it was surrounded by people where the prey could be harvested. These annual drives provided the nomads of the Great Basin with their sole opportunity to reaffirm cultural and linguists affinities, to arrange marriages, and to conduct spiritual rites--in short the annual antelope hunt provided them with their sole opportunity to preserve their identity as a people.

Among the Euro-Americans who first moved across and onto the Great Plains the pronghorn was a valued food source. Indeed, dried "antelope" often was the preferred choice over that more traditional fare, buffalo jerky. Luther S. "Yellowstone" Kelly, a Plainsman who roamed the Yellowstone Basin from the 1860s to the 1880s, sang the praises of the pronghorn, both as food and as a source of entertainment. In his memoirs Kelly wrote of observing the pronghorn along the Yellowstone in 1870, near present day Glendive, Montana. "We pulled our boat . . . up to a timbered bank, beyond which lay a broad expanse of prairie, [a] rich land covered with buffalo and bunch grass. . . . It was a beautiful place and view. . . . Within one hundred yards of us two beautiful creatures, antelope, were quietly grazing. Many more were to be observed out on the flat. . . . Your prong-horn is a graceful animal. If you show yourself suddenly he will turn and look, then dance away, or perhaps circle around and stop again, for he has great curiosity. and if you lie down and flap your arms or legs vigorously he may come within gunshot. In winter the ankles of the front feet are often a mass of prickly pear thorns . . . [for he seeks] the protection of areas of cactus when pursued by wolves or coyotes." Kelly noted that he always preferred to dine on antelope in the spring of the year, when other game animals were in poor condition.

It is estimated that there once 20 to 40 million pronghorn in North America. By the 1920s the pronghorn was nearly extinct, with perhaps as few as 30,000 left by 1925. This was due, in part, to over-hunting, destruction of its habitat by farmers, the widespread fencing of its native pastures, and the slaughter of large numbers of pronghorns by cattlemen, who believed that it competed with livestock for graze and forage. Today it is estimated that about 400,000 roam the grasslands of North America.

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