Wyoming Wildlife Photography

One of my favorite activities in summer is to watch, and when I can, photograph, Wyoming wildlife.

Sometimes we take for granted what most only see on TV or in the movies.

In Wyoming, our wildlife is part of our everyday life.

Not sure I will ever take it for granted.

On today’s post are a few of the photos I have shot in the past month.

Nothing beats a chance to see nature up close.

On a side note, a big thank you to everyone who is purchasing my books the past few weeks – they are selling well, in fact, better than ever. – if you want to take a look click this link.

More Pronghorn

Recently I have been doing research and reading personal accounts of early homesteading and town building in eastern Nebraska where I grew up. I ran across a story of antelope (pronghorn) hunting in that area in the 1860s. I had never heard of Pronghorn in that area and I decided to do some digging.

When Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery explored the west in the early 1800s there were an estimated 35 million pronghorn antelope in North America. One hundred years later the population was estimated at 13,000 with extinction coming within the next decade. Today there are nearly a million pronghorn in Wyoming several hundred thousand thrive on the hard grass, yucca, cacti and sagebrush in the high grass prairies of this state.

It took full protection in every state to increase the heard, full protection for fifty years, but it worked. Much of the west has enough pronghorn for an annual hunting season as game managers watch and manage the herds carefully across the west.

Today pronghorn are a tourist attraction in the west, most of the year they are easy to spot and a joy to watch, especially running, up to 55 MPH.

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Pronghorn

Seems like I never get tired of watching the many North American Pronghorn around the state. Doesn't matter if they are standing or running. Few people realize that pronghorn, like the bison, once numbered in the millions in the American west. Also like the bison they were shot to near extinction for meat and skins. Pronghorn are a curious animal and hunters could often shoot dozens or more in a day. At one point in the late 1800s so much meat was for sale that one could purchase an entire carcass for a few pennies.

Not sure how many pronghorn there are today in Wyoming but the number is often reported as more than the number of people here in the cowboy state. Wyoming’s people population is a bit over half a million, so that is a pretty good number of pronghorn, but is likely high by about 200,000 or so. Still a good number and if you are watching, pronghorn can be seen just about anywhere in Wyoming.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department does an outstanding job of managing the population, allowing hunting to keep pronghorn numbers constant.

Thinking about taking a drive-about sometime tomorrow, watch a few North American Pronghorn, or as most westerners call them, antelope.