Road to Rancho Rehfeld, corn to the right, brown earth to the left, looking south, a mile from our first pronghorn buck location, 4000-odd feet in altitude on the Colorado high plains, close to the western Kansas border. This road runs straight to the south and will eventually jog to the east before heading straight south again to account for the Earth's curvature.

A PRAIRIE ANTELOPE HUNT
Out on the High Plains of Colorado
Near the Kansas Border
Looking for Pronghorn
with The El Fornio Historical Society

October 3, 2009

"In my walk I Killed a Buck Goat [antelope] of this Countrey, about the hight of the Grown Deer, its body Shorter... the Colour is a light gray with black behind its ears down its neck... Verry actively made, has only a pair of hoofs to each foot, his brains on the back of his head, his Norstrals large, his eyes like a Sheep he is more like the Antilope or Gazella of Africa than any other Species of Goat."

William Clark, Friday, September 14, 1804

"We found the Antelope extreemly shye and watchfull insomuch that we had been unable to get a shot at them; when at rest they generally seelect the most elivated point in the neighbourhood, and as they are watchfull and extreemely quick of sight and their sense of smelling very accute it is almost impossible to approach them within gunshot... they will frequently discover and flee from you at the distance of three miles [4.8 kilometers]. I had this day an opportunity of witnessing the agility and the superior fleetness of this anamal which was to me really astonishing... I beheld the rapidity of their flight along the ridge before me it appeared reather the rappid flight of birds than the motion of quadrupeds."

Meriiwether Lewis, Monday, September 17, 1804

WE ALL PILED INTO THE TRUCK. Our rancher host and cousin-in-law, Ron, drove out to the pasture as the sun rose, looking for a prong horn antelope buck (Antilocapra americana) the four of us had seen in the last day, standing at the edge of the road.
  “Well,” Ron said in the dark of the cab. “I’m figuring he’s up here somewhere. Let’s take a look.”
  This was Ron’s land. He worked it with his wife, Lisa, who was my cousin, and their three children. At that moment, as he turned up pasture, I was loving how fundamental the search for a pronghorn buck might be: that is, if we saw the creature more than once in the area, he was likely to still be there.
  Pronghorns don’t travel a great distance it turns out. They like to frequent the same loop: graze a patch, go to a water hole, cross an open fence, graze a patch, turnaround, cross the same fence, back to the waterhole. It was predictable and even with the animal’s sight and distance advantage, a downfall—as much as these athletic, big-hearted animals could sprint off at a moment’s notice, they would always sprint off to the same four places. Evolution gave them their place as the fastest living land mammal, but evolution only works four out of five times. No matter where they ran to, we could eventually be there.
  Ron’s parents’ parents had ranched this patchwork of wheat, corn, cattle, CRP and prairie—both grazed and pure—for over a century. It would have been impossible for us to figure who owned what if it hadn’t been for Ron’s stewardship. With Ron, we simply drove off the county road, onto pasture and started looking around.
The day before, my hunting partner, Daniel, had given me first shot. I was grateful and rode passenger side of Ron, rifle between my knees. Daniel sat behind me with his Winchester, and to his left was Erin, Ron and Lisa’s seventeen-year-old daughter, their oldest. She held her own rifle. Ron hadn’t drawn a tag. Three of us all had bucks—Daniel would be second, Erin third.
  Rocking back and forth up the pasture, we scanned the horizon. It was a long flat distance to our left, north, and to the right, south, was a taller bit of reeds. We all looked about for our guy as the truck pitched back and forth.
  “There he is,” Ron whispered as we all caught sight of a perfect silhouette against the dawn, four hundred-odd yards or so.
  “I’m gonna just sneak up a little bit ,” Ron moved the truck as the front end squeaked away. “John, you might go ahead and load now.”
I put three cartridges from my jacket into the magazine of my rifle. In the process I managed not to blow a hole in the roof of the cab.
  Ron stopped. It was about as close as we were going to get. Pronghorns don’t mind seeing trucks driving about through the year. They’re used to it, as if the vehicles were birds or other mammals going about their business. It’s when a truck stops that the creature gets suspicious.
  Our guy stood off at a fair but, perhaps for him, convenient distance. I slipped out of the cab.
  At this point, I must say that the mandated orange hat and vest makes you feel a bit of the buffoon, as if a comical party hat and chin strap were stuck to your head, but you get over it—especially when no one shoots at you. Also, carrying a loaded rifle while dressed like a clown helps a lot.

Wearing the mandated orange vest on the prairie . . . at least
no one shoots at you.

  At first I sat into the scrub, knees up, to sight the animal. He kept his interest and did not bolt.
  Parochial and by-the-book, my position allowed me only a nary view of the top of the buck’s head.
  “Set up across the hood of the truck, John,” they hurried me along. “You should.”
  In the distance the antelope wondered what we were up to.
With encouragement, I relented. I got up and curled around to the left of the truck, slipping my safety on and off, then putting my elbows on the hood. Alas, I had a better view of the animal.
  I spied him through the scope. At nine power, he didn’t seem closer. In fact, he was a lot farther away than the two hundred yards I had practiced at.
I knew the bullet wouldn’t shoot flat at that distance so I could only hope to arc it in. I aimed a little high of the heart-lung construct. The light around him was still a soft orange, white and reedy green. I put the center hairs where I thought they should be and pulled the trigger.
  In the corner of my eye, I saw Erin, Daniel and Ron plugging their ears in the truck cab.
  BOOM. The rifle sent the bullet over the buck’s brisket, an orange splay of dirt spiking behind him.
  He didn’t move. A deer would have bolted, but this animal didn’t move. As perceptive and vigilant a creature they are, this antelope just looked back at me as if I had tried to hold a sneeze.
  I worked the bolt and chambered another cartridge.
  Daniel coached. “Just a little high. Bring it down a bit.”
  The antelope cooperated, since he had likely never been shot at before nor stood next to a cousin who had been.
  I aimed for the brisket, hoping that at two hundred and forty-some yards the bullet might drop right into his heart and lungs, textbook-style.
I pulled the trigger. BOOM number two of the sunrise.
  Pause.
  Failing isn’t bad, it’s how you deal with it that counts. The things you imagine having in life that don’t show up can’t be the definers. Be prepared to turn on a dime.
  Daniel let with the three greatest words I could have heard all year. “You dropped him! Oh, my god! You dropped him!”
  I looked up. Frustratingly, my guy wasn’t there anymore. I picked up my brass. I looked up again. My colleagues seemed still insistent. “I think you dropped him, John!”   
“Let’s go take a look,” Ron smiled and turned.
  Before I stepped in the car, I unloaded my last cartridge in the dirt. That’s that, I thought, still waiting to hear that my antelope had pulled a Harry Houdini and slid away from us.
  Daniel hit me hard on the back as I sat into the cab. “Oh, my god. You did it!”
Although I had practiced for the moment a long time, I still couldn’t believe it.
We rolled up the pasture with the cut wheat crunching under our tires.
  “Just like that, huh?” Ron laughed and prodded me. “John did it.” He made a shooting through a scope move and chuckled.
  I could see that we were all feeling a little supported in our efforts.
  Where did the serendipity come from? Is it part of the preparation?

Erin pointed from the back seat. “There it is.”
  The antelope was lying on turned brown dirt and wheat stubble. He was not dead. He tried to lift his legs to bolt, but they only worked slightly. He was breathing slowly, living in a world different than ours—you could tell looking in his eyes.
He opened his mouth and grabbed a breath again. He was declining. You could feel that, too. Looking over his coat, we could not figure where he was hit, adding to the odd at ease we had settled into getting a buck so quickly.
  We stayed with him in his last minutes, back from his field of vision. To me, standing back adds a respect given to a being you have essentially just shot to death for a handful of, more or less, you’d like to think, positive cultural reasons. Any step towards dignity avoids cruelty. I’m of the mind that sticking to these values over time isn’t a bad idea. Also, there’s that karmic moment where the right attitude might shield you from the wounded beast suddenly getting up and applying his horns to your lower intestine.
  I remember his last breath. He labored for it with a slight jerk of the neck and body. The cold air made for a puff in the light. He gummed about, looking directly ahead and was gone in a few moments.
  Ron lifted a leg. The creature didn’t stir. “That’s it.”
  We all shifted our position around the body. Ron pulled the head and flipped him over.
  “There it is.”
  There was a solid, coagulated red hole in our boy’s neck. There didn’t seem to be an exit. The bullet, we figured, must have hit the spine, knocking him stiff, then he bled into himself. Later when I him dressed and cleaned him up, I put a finger into the hole looking for the bullet, split and flattened, but I didn’t find it.
  “Well, John,” Ron said. “Get your picture.”
  Erin pulled her camera out and I handed my iPhone to Daniel. I picked the horns up and positioned his face forward. The morning light was rising and the cold air dissipating. I had a thick jacket on with no gloves. Atop all of it I wore my hunter orange hat and vest. Smiling with my modest achievement, preparing for the camera, I reminded, “Nobody looks good in orange.”
  Click.

A half hour after sunrise on opening day,.
"Nobody looks good in orange," I reminded.

  “Well,” Ron looked the terrain over. “Let’s leave him here—he’ll be fine. Maybe we head over to the North plot and see if we can find Daniel’s buck. We can come back and get this one.”
  We all turned towards the truck, leaving the creature in the field, the lot of us feeling accomplished by just being part of one another during the pile into the truck, no less bound by a few shots that gave us this animal whose presence defined our appetite for the world in which we awoke that morning.
  That night we would eat his heart, along with that of the other buck that Daniel would take only a thirty minutes later. The two would be sliced and roasted with root vegetables, mushrooms, sage and garlic at high heat. And they weren’t bad, these antelope hearts. They were bigger than we thought and tasted fine.
  A handful of nights later, off the high plains of Colorado and Kansas, along the coast of California in San Francisco, we had antelope meatloaf for five. It was tasty too and we ate it with red and white wines, good friends and conversation that invoked not just the cousins we missed, but the antelopes we had taken to our tables and mused over, beasts we had shot like Lewis and Clark, only with iPhones in our pockets and coolers waiting to be filled in our hotel rooms.

—John Graham,
San Francisco, CA
October, 2009

Both bucks tagged on the back of the flat bed about 10:15 a.m. on opening day.

"That night we would eat his heart, along with that of the other buck that Daniel would take only a thirty minutes later. The two would be sliced and roasted with root vegetables, mushrooms, sage and garlic at high heat. And they weren’t bad, these antelope hearts. They were bigger than we thought and tasted fine."

One pronghorn, after the flight home, turned to a ham, chops, steaks and ground round, frozen solid in a cooler checked through Southwest. While originally related to deer, they are smaller (the male topping out at around 130 pounds) and yield about 25 to 35 pounds of meat.

Back in San Francisco, the horns of the antelope sit in the window sill, drying as I sand and carve them for adjacent display. This is ancient possession.