Freaky the Pronghorn
In mid October 2004, it was time once again for Dad and I to go on our annual pronghorn hunt in Wyoming. This year would be trip # 8 for me, and for the first time my college buddy Steve and his Dad would join us on the hunt.
As usual, we all drove in met at the Best Western in Gillette Wyoming the night before the hunt – I from Seattle, Dad from San Antonio, and Steve and his Dad from El Paso. Steve and his Dad were both excited to hunt, but I could tell they were not really convinced that the hunting was a spectacular as we had made it out to be. They were freshly back from their African Safari in Zimbabwe so I was also pretty sure this would be a bit of a let down when compared to the outstanding hunt they had partaken in there.
We awoke around 6 the next morning and met for breakfast at our usual haunt just down the road: “Grannies Kitchen”. After a leisurely breakfast, we drove the 40 miles out to the ranch near Spotted Horse. As we drove in, we saw the usual large herds of pronghorn out in the fields. We turned into the ranch, and drove down the road to Robert’s farmhouse. Steve and his Dad stopped often to look at the deer and prongs on the way in. I could tell they were beginning to think that the hunting might really be as good as we were making it out to be!
After chatting with Robert for 20 min or so, we saddled up in his truck and started out. At about 8:15 AM we saw a herd of prongs down in a field below us with a nice buck in it. Further glassing determined that not only was there a nice buck, but there was a second odd looking buck with deformed horns in the group as well. They were about 800 yards out so Steve and I decided to try a stalk. We got behind a rise and walked in as close as we could. Then we crawled up to within a couple hundred yards where we could see them in the field below us.
This was Steve’s first pronghorn trip, so he had first call on what he wanted to shoot. The good buck was probably 13 or so inches and the one with the odd rack (who we dubbed “freaky”) was not massive, but the way the horns curled downward was really cool looking. I asked him which one he was going to shoot, hoping he would choose the nice buck and leave freaky to me. He elected to go for the nice one. He was shooting from a prone position about 150 yards out, took aim and fired. The prong when down like a sack of potatoes. Steve started to celebrate, so I yelled:
“SHHHH, I want freaky!”
He quelled his excitement for the moment while I kept the scope trained on freaky. The herd was not heavily spooked. They moved about 50 yards and stopped, moving around nervously wondering what was going on. I squeezed off my 30-06 and down went Freaky! Now we both celebrated! The remaining does moved about 50 more yards and bunched up not sure what to do. We took some photos of the shooting position. You can see in this first one, both of our pronghorns laying on the ground, with the herd of does bunched up in the back ground.
As we moved down the hill to collect our prizes, the does ran off. Steve’s prong is in the front, mine is laying down behind his.
Here is freaky.
I have a theory regarding what happened to cause the horns to droop. Even though pronghorns have true horns, not antlers, they do shed the husks every year and grow new ones. My theory is that this one’s husks did not pop off the year before, and when the new ones started to grow in, they forced the old ones up and off. However the weight of the husks caused the new growth to pull downward during the early phases of the growing process. I base this on a full body mount I saw in a Gillette Wyoming sporting goods store that also had drooping horns, but still had the prior year’s husk dangling off the new horn.
The time was 8:45 and we had two animals down. After cleaning these guys, and tossing them in the truck, we headed off in search of one for our Dads. 15 min later we rounded a corner and came across another nice buck. Steve’s Dad told my dad to take it so he did. Down it went and by 9:10 we had three animals in the bag.
By 9:30 it was in the truck and we started looking for our final prong. We came across another herd with a nice buck in it, and it was Steve’s Dad’s turn. He fired and dropped the fourth and final pronghorn. It was 9:45AM.
We rolled back into the farmhouse before 10:30 am, two hours later after leaving, with 4 pronghorn in the bed of the truck!
Steve mentioned that while the variety of game was far more diverse in Africa, the quantity and quality of animals here on this ranch was as good as anything he saw in while on Safari! He went on to say that he was skeptical that the hunting was as good here as I made it out to be, but that it was truly spectacular!
It was now time to look for a deer. We killed an hour or two at the farm house eating lunch and chatting for a while before we started looking for the deer. Sometime around 1:30 we started out on the deer hunt. After covering the usual honey holes on the ranch without seeing any large bucks we finally came across a decent 3x3 mulie about ½ a mile from the farm house. I took a 150 yard shot and we wrapped the day up with animal #5 at around 2pm.
I was very pleased with freaky. I had taken 7 other nice prongs over the years, but this one was really interesting. Not trophy class, measuring a mere 12.25 inches, but unusual. I decided to have freaky mounted. I had good luck with a deer mount that a lady in Gillette named Gervanne did so I asked her to do freaky. She was excited to do it and turned it around very quickly. She even entered him into a local taxidermy contest and took first prize with him!
And that is how Freaky ended up on the wall!
