Prairie Ghosts Along the Shadows on the Trail!

Figure One - Speed Demon! Pronghorn buck watching me across
his prairie kingdom. Photograph by John Bradford Branney.

Antilocapra americana or the American pronghorn is the fastest mammal in North America. It has a distribution from southern Canada to northern Mexico.

I was driving down a bumpy gravel road in Wyoming on an early morning jaunt to one of my favorite artifact-hunting ranches. A sea of sagebrush and beige prairie surrounded the road. Out of the corner of my right eye, I caught movement out on the prairie. I glanced over and spotted a pronghorn buck racing my vehicle. I peered down at my speedometer and noted that I was plugging along at a tad more than thirty miles per hour. I looked over at the pronghorn buck and he was not even laboring to keep up. I gandered at the stretch of road in front of me and saw that the road was pretty straight. I decided to put that pronghorn buck to the test. I stepped on the accelerator just to see how fast Mr. Pronghorn could go. You have to watch out for pronghorns paralleling your vehicle. They have a nasty habit of accelerating and crossing the road in front of you. I do not understand why they do that. Maybe they are showing off or maybe it is just a deadly game they like to play or maybe they are not that bright. I do know that sometimes that does not end well for them.      

Figure Two - The first book in my Paleoindian adventure series is SHADOWS on the TRAIL.

My vehicle picked up speed at around thirty-five miles per hour and the pronghorn buck matched it. I again checked the road out in front of me for curves and ruts. I sped up to forty miles per hour. The vehicle chattered and yawed down the washboard road. Forty miles per hour was my limit, otherwise, I might be the one that ends up out on the prairie. I thought that might be the limit of the pronghorn buck, as well. I looked over at my pronghorn friend and saw that at forty miles per hour, the buck was not done with me yet. He lowered his head and found another gear. His legs chewed up the prairie sand as he accelerated across the road right in front of my vehicle. I pumped the brakes and slowed down. That was enough for me. I let the adrenalin subside in my body. The last time I saw that pronghorn buck his white rump was waving goodbye to me. The pronghorn buck was adios, amigos, disappearing in a sea of tall Wyoming sagebrush. The pronghorn buck just demonstrated to me who the fastest dude on the prairie was, and it sure was not me.  

Pronghorn are the second fastest land animal in the world, right behind cheetahs. At thirty miles per hour, pronghorns are loping along. At forty-five miles per hour, they are cruising along. Beyond that, they are simply hauling!   

High Plains archaeological sites are well represented with the remains of pronghorn antelope. The archaeological record of the Folsom People, my main characters in Shadows on the Trail, demonstrates that pronghorn antelope were an important component of their Pleistocene diet. Investigators have found the remains of pronghorn antelope in Folsom-aged strata at two major archaeological sites: the Lindenmeier Site in northern Colorado and the Agate Basin Site in eastern Wyoming. Figure three shows fluted projectile points from my collection that are diagnostic of the Folsom Paleoindian Complex. 

Figure Three - Folsom projectile points from the author's collection.  

It is now time to climb into our time machine and set it for the late Pleistocene, sometime around 10,600 B.C. We join three young hunters from my prehistoric odyssey called Shadows on the Trail on a difficult trek across the Arid Plains of North Texas and southern Colorado. The three young hunters named Chayton, Wiyaka, and Keya are almost out of food and water. From that book passage, it appears things have gone from bad to worse. 

      The hunters were in the direct path of the dirt and dust blowing in the wind. Whatever was creating the dust, was heading towards the hunters. Chayton was nervous and peered around for something to hide behind. His eyes teared up from the dust and dirt in the air. The empty prairie offered nothing but sage and greasewood. The rumbling sound grew louder, and the dust cloud was practically on top of the hunters. They could barely see each other. Wiyaka suddenly stood up. His face lit up into a broad smile and then instantly became a worried frown. He waved his spear over his head and screamed his lungs out. Still hunkered down, Chayton and Keya peered at Wiyaka as if they were sure he had gone crazy.   

The lead animals spotted Wiyaka and his waving spear. The herd veered off to the right of the three hunters. Chayton stood up and Keya followed suit. The three hunters watched as hundreds, if not thousands of pronghorn antelope galloped past them. The herd was so large that the dust cloud it created brought temporary darkness to the prairie. By the time the thundering hooves died out, the dust cloud had drifted off to the southeast and the blazing sun reappeared.  

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Keya laughed and pointed a finger at Chayton.

“What are you laughing at?” Chayton demanded. 

Wiyaka turned around and looked at Chayton. He laughed. Keya and Wiyaka were having a good laugh at Chayton’s expense. Dirt covered Chayton from head to toes. When he opened his mouth, the only thing on his body not covered in dirt and dust were his teeth. Chayton reminded the hunters about the herd.

“Are we going to stand here and laugh at me or go after the herd?” Chayton demanded.

“I would like to stand here and laugh at you,” Wiyaka ribbed Chayton.

“I am leaving!” Chayton announced. 

Wiyaka and Keya ran after Chayton. In their exuberance, the hunters had all but forgotten about the heat and the wind and their thirst and sore feet. The hunters reached a small knoll quite gassed from their run. They slogged up the hill, having to stop several times for a breather. When they reached the top, all three hunters collapsed on the ground, completely exhausted. Chayton peeked over the top of the knoll and his eyes could not believe the sight. He did a double take. In the near distance, a massive river meandered across the Arid Plains. On both sides of the river, large herds of tatoke or pronghorn antelope grazed on the short grass growing along the floodplain.

The three hunters had found paradise.          

Figure Four - Pronghorn buck cruising along on the prairie.
Author photograph. 

I imagine that back 12,600 years ago, pronghorn herds were plentiful. Pronghorn antelope are survivors, and their herds are prolific even today. While deer have short-crowned, browsing teeth, pronghorn have high-crowned teeth which enables them to browse on grit-covered shrubs and forbs. Pronghorn can survive on a diet of sagebrush, something a deer cannot do. 

In a wide-open environment like the Arid Plains in the story above, pronghorn antelope are nearly unapproachable. Pronghorns have phenomenal eyesight and they don't miss much, even at very long distances. George Frison reported in his book Survival of Hunting that pronghorns' bulging eyes allow the beasts a nearly 360-degree field of vision and that study showed that a pronghorn's eyesight is akin to a human peering through eight power binoculars. Pronghorn, bison, and caribou are hypersensitive to movement. If you are a spear-toting hunter in the Folsom tribe without a mode of transportation other than your two legs, you can imagine how difficult it was to get close enough to hunt pronghorn antelope on the open plains. 

However, for prehistoric hunters, there was a bit of hope. Pronghorn antelope have a couple of weaknesses. Even though pronghorns are mostly unapproachable for a spear-tossing hunter on a wide-open prairie, the animals become confused when dealing with physical barriers or when surrounded by humans. Trap them in some kind of dead-end arroyo or with a manmade or natural barricade, and pronghorn antelope tend to run around in circles until they literally fall over from exhaustion, instead of attempting to escape the enclosure. Prehistoric hunters took advantage of that behavior by building brush, stone, or wooden fences that funneled the pronghorn herds into more confined areas. There, the prehistoric hunters dispatched the pronghorns with spears and stone mauls. 

In the book Architecture of Hunting by Ashley Lemke, the author reported there are over one hundred large-scale hunting structures dated from Early Archaic to historical Indian times in the Great Basin of the United States. Early hunters trapped pronghorn, mule deer, big-horn sheep, and elk in those structures. Communal pronghorn hunters used lines of brush, rocks, and wooden poles to trap the beasts. Corrals were eighteen inches to seven feet tall and made up of juniper trees, pine, sagebrush, and stone. Fences did not need to be high for pronghorns because they are just like caribou; both beasts prefer to go under, not over obstacles. I have found a few pronghorn carcasses hung up on barb wire fences. Attempting to leap over the fence did not end well for them.  

Figure Five - A buck and three does that I "lured" closer by waving my walking stick in the air 
while artifact hunting in Wyoming in September 2014. My game began when the
foursome was at least a quarter of a mile away. John Bradford Branney Photograph.   

   

Pronghorn antelope possess another weakness; their curiosity compromises them. When pronghorn antelope spot something of interest on the prairie, they oftentimes move in for a closer look. They need to see what it is, even though it might be a dangerous predator. Since they can outrun all breathing predators, they can use a burst of speed to rocket away. I have tested their curiosity many times while hunting for prehistoric artifacts on the wide-open prairie (figure five). When I see a pronghorn in the distance, I wave my walking stick in the air to get its attention. Once it locks onto me, I can usually hold its attention for a while. Occasionally, I can draw them in closer, or at least hold them in place standing there and staring at me. The game usually ends when either the pronghorn or I become bored and lose interest.    

Figure Six - I took this photograph in September 2020 while prehistoric artifact
hunting in Wyoming. The pronghorns initially scampered away but stopped to 
check me out one last time. "Curiosity kills the cat".   

    

Read the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy for 

more adventures about pronghorn antelope!  

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The historical fiction novels written by John Bradford Branney are known for their impeccable research and biting realism. In his latest blockbuster novel Beyond the Campfire, Branney catapults his readers back into Prehistoric America where they reunite with some familiar faces from Branney’s best-selling prehistoric adventure series the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy.

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa. Beyond the Campfire is the eleventh published book by Branney.

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