Pronghorn is a symbol of Wyoming

by Doug Crowe
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 12:45 PM MST

Of all the animals inhabiting Wyoming, my favorite is the pronghorn.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to garner much respect from some people. You can hardly hang around a sporting goods store in the fall without overhearing some redneck carrying on about getting "a six pack of beer and a pound of bologna and going out to shoot goats."

Of course, pronghorns are not goats. They aren't antelope either.

In point of fact, they are taxonomically distinct, the sole members of their own unique family.

Of all the horned animals found in the world, pronghorn are the only ones which annually shed and then regrow the horn sheath.

Another characteristic of these critters is that they live on the wide-open prairies and plains, and are easy to observe.

Unlike most large mammals, they are not sequestered during the daylight hours. With little effort or expenditure, one can sally forth from Casper on any day and, depending upon the time of year, observe pronghorns going about their business of living, dying, fighting, mating and giving birth.

If you are not delighted by such a grand and glorious display, then I really don't think I would care to know you.

Yet another aspect of pronghorn biology is that they are also the fastest of all North American land mammals.

Not only that, they are autochthonous, meaning they originated where they are currently found.

That is to say they evolved here on the high plains and grasslands of western North America and never went anywhere else.

They nearly became extinct here too! Prior to the arrival of Euroamericans, the pronghorn population was estimated to be in excess of 30 million. Like most wildlife, they were heavily exploited during western settlement and had decreased to around 15,000 by 1915.

Most of those animals were in Wyoming.

An aroused citizenry, together with the enactment of protective laws, resulted in herds increasing to approximately 700,000 by the end of the 20th century. More than half of that number resides in Wyoming.

Further, if you circumscribe a circle with its center in Casper that also includes those pronghorn in eastern Montana and northern Colorado, it would add up to 75 percent of the world's pronghorn population.

So you see, being in the center of their distribution, we tend to take them for granted, but for the rest of the world, they are rare and unique.

Not only are these critters nearly unique to our state, they embody many of the characteristics that define Wyoming and the western experience. They are proud and high-strung.

They are able to endure and even prosper under conditions of extreme hardship. They are tough and durable when in their own chosen environment, but seldom prosper when moved to other parts of the country.

And like most Wyomingites, they require wide open spaces and healthy doses of just being left alone to roam free.

All of this brings me to my final point: why isn't the pronghorn on the new Wyoming quarter? You can find some testosterone-soaked kid that is willing to get his legs braided by a bucking horse anywhere from Madison Square Garden in New York to the Los Angeles Coliseum and all points in between.

But there is only one place you are gonna find most of the world's pronghorn racing across the high plains!

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