Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

As soon as the coyotes were out of sight I hastened to the highest near-by point hoping with glasses to see the mother antelope. She was just leaving the water-hole. Her movements evidently were a part of a strategic plan to deceive the watchful eyes and the cunning noses of enemies, chiefly coyotes. She fed a quarter of a mile south, then ran on for more than a mile still farther. She then galloped more than two miles northeast and later, with many doublings which involved her trail, worked back to the youngsters.

In following and watching the movements of the mother I stumbled over a lone antelope kid about half a mile from the other two. I returned later and found that it was entangled between the twisted low-lying limbs of a sagebrush. Not until I laid hold of the kid to drag it out did it make a move. Then it struggled and gave a low bleat.

Realizing that this might bring the mother like lightning I let go and rose up. There she was, coming like the wind, and only four or five hundred feet away, indifferent to the fact that man is the most dangerous of enemies. Just how close she might have come, just what might have happened had I not straightened up at that moment, is sheer guesswork. But the freed youngster butted me violently behind and then ran off to meet his mother.

During most of the year the great silent plains are at rest in tawny and gray brown. The dreamy, sunny distances show only moving cloud shadows. A brief barrage of dust storm sometimes sweeps across or a wild drive of tumbleweeds with a front from horizon to horizon goes bounding and rolling toward the rim, where they go over and vanish. But these endless distances are palpitating with flowers and song when the young antelope are born.

One May morning a flock of blackbirds alighted upon a leafy cottonwood tree—a lone tuft in an empire of treeless distances. They sang all at once—a whirlwind of song. Two antelope herds were on separate skylines. The silvery, melodious peal of the yellow-breasted meadow lark rang out all over the wide wild prairie. Prairie dogs scampered, barked, and played; butterflies circled and floated above the scattered and stunted sage; thousands of small birds were busy with nest and song, and countless ragged spaces of brilliant wild flowers illuminated the grass-green surface to every horizon.

The antelope is known as the pronghorn, because of a single small prong on each horn. This prong is more like a guard and serves as a hilt. In fighting an antelope often catches its opponent’s thrust on this prong. The horn commonly is less than ten inches long. Many females do not have horns, and rarely are these fully developed on any female.

Deer and elk have deciduous horns—that is, horns that are shed annually. Goat and bighorn never shed their horns. But each year antelope sheds the outer part—the point and sheath—of the horn, retaining the stubs or stumps which grow new horns.

The antelope has a number of marked characteristics and some of these are unique. It is without dew claws; the hair is hollow and filled with pitch; teeth are of peculiar pattern; it eats mostly bitter or pungent food; has large, long-range eyes of almost telescopic power; has numerous and scattered scent glands; is without colour camouflage—in fact, its colour is in part revealing, for the bristling of its white buttocks serves to give signal flashes. The antelope is the plains’ graceful racing model of long and successful development. It is either the least—the smallest—or near the smallest of our hoofed wild animals.

The antelope is specialized in speed. If there were to be a free-for-all race on the plains, with deer, antelope, elk, sheep, bear, lion, coyote, fox, dog, horse, and even the rabbit as starters, the antelope generally would be the winner, whether the race was for one mile or ten. Perhaps the blooded race horse and the greyhound would outstrip him, but among wild animals the antelope is the speedy one.

Wolves and coyotes pursue the pronghorn in relays or capture it strategically through various kinds of mutual aid. Now and then an antelope will turn upon its pursuers and fight them fiercely, occasionally triumphantly.