Pronghorns and Sagebrush

Pronghorns and Sagebrush. Wyoming's Wildlife. Of all our magnificent big game animals, only the pronghorn antelope cannot be traced back to Eurasia. Other big game animals are believed to have migrated to the continent via the now sunken Bering land mass located between Siberia and Alaska. Thus, it can be said that the pronghorn is a true native of North America. , The pronghorn is not a true antelope and belongs to an entirely different family (Antilocapridae) than other antelope. The pronghorn is the only living representative of this family. Like other horned animals (i.e. cattle, sheep, goats) the pronghorn grows hollow horn sheaths composed of fused hair fibers. It is the only horned animal in the world that sheds and regrows its sheaths annually and is the only horned animal with a branched or pronged horn. Members of the deer family (i.e. deer, elk, moose) grow antlers, not horns, of solid bone which are also shed and regrown each year. The pronghorn is also one of the world's fastest animals and has been clocked at speeds up to 70 miles per hour. , Despite healthy population numbers today, the pronghorn once faced near extinction. Pressure from settlers and market hunters reduced a thriving population to about 5,000 pronghorns by 1903. From 1908-1915, the pronghorn hunting season in Wyoming was closed in order to allow the population to recover. Today, nearly two-thirds of all the worlds pronghorn antelope are found within a three hundred mile radius of Casper and the state hosts a total pronghorn population of nearly a half-million animals. , Pronghorns depend on sagebrush for feed in the winter and Wyoming features more vast expanses of sagebrush than any place in North America. Considering the relationship between pronghorns and sagebrush, it is not hard to see why Wyoming has more pronghorn antelope than any other state in the world.