Ghosting Pronghorn

Petroglyph, Northern Great Basin

Pia wantsipe toowenene’ iten
Pia wantsipe toowenene’ iten

Pennan tapai tatawento toowenene’ ite

The big antelope buck-pe slowly grazing while standing

The big antelope buck-pe slowly grazing while standing

Sun beams flashing, hitting him while he stands and grazes.

    --Antelope Song, a Western Shoshone round dance song

Gaming, shooting. This year's hunt for pronghorn in Oregon began in August and continues until late September in various “Hunt Units.” The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) manages “Big Game” hunting permits (tags); this year permitting the shooting of over 2000 pronghorn, about 10% of the estimated Oregon population. (70 tags provided for Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge.)  “Open Season” dates vary among weaponry:  archery, muzzleloaders, “youth only,” and rifles.  With all hunting east of the Cascades, wildfire, smoke, and access restrictions are always wild cards.  And: Water.   

Watering, waiting. Water needs and patterns of pronghorn have been studied and documented for decades. Generally, some spring-season food sources may by sufficient, with many variables. However, in late summer and early fall, pronghorn need to drink water daily, usually mornings. Hunters in Oregon know this. “Blinds” are set up near the few water places. In this year of extreme and exceptional drought, access to limited water sources is crucial. Drought is unforgiving for most wildlife, feral horses, and compels ranchers to herd-in cattle early from “open range,” usually public lands grazing allotments. If and when maintained, stock watering troughs may be helpful to wildlife. Or the water-hole-catchments where BLM -- primarily for livestock -- has bermed streams or backhoed playas in SE Oregon. Hundreds now bone dry.

Above: Rifle blind on desiccated playa; Map Oregon east of the Cascades, August 24 2021: Fresh Red=Extreme Drought, Congealed Purple=Exceptional Drought (highest on scale, a dubious honor); A bow-hunter's "disguised" hut near BLM waterhole (Lake County OR); she was kind but noted that me hiking by meant pronghorns would not now approach -- the hut was a complete surprise to me. 

Imagining, fantasizing. Pronghorn, hunted to near extinction by the early 20th century, from millions two centuries ago to a few thousand.  Since the 1920s, policies and protections have augmented a robust return of the “Prairie Ghost” with populations sufficient to permit hunting. And to become an icon for running "wild."

Above: Game Stamp for the 50th anniversary of the Order of the Pronghorn (Lake County OR) with art by Tom Beecham; Logo for the now-closed Umatilla Chemical Weapons Depot (Boardman OR); Illustration promoting High Desert Museum's fundraiser August 28, 2021 (Bend OR);  Petroglyph (detail) Lake County OR. 

Is there a way to be logical about this? I am not sure. I do know pronghorn have been pursued and killed for food by humans for thousands of years in western North America. Indigenous peoples hunted and killed pronghorn for at least 10,000 years as testified by the remains in some archaeological excavations. “Procuring” has been documented from the early Holocene in SE Oregon. Evidence in the Northern Great Basin shows communal hunts, usually with traps at drive sites with barriers/fences of stone, juniper, or brush, was an important method of capture and killing. Countless methods, strategies, and devices are evidenced among hundreds of archaeological studies, ethnographic reports,19th-century journals of Euro-americans, eco-bio studies, and Native American stories.  

Above: Drive wall, 2 photos; (Petroglyph All Northern Great Basin)

NOTES

All Photos by this Blog's author; click to enlarge.

Another blind: September 2020 post: SIMULACRA: A la playa

https://rockartoregon.blogspot.com/2020/09/simulacra-la-playa.html

Antelope Song transcribed and translated by Beverly Crum, ca. 1975. Cited by Steven J. Crum in Julian Steward’s Vision of the Great Basin (1999).

In 1915 in the western US about 13,000 remained of the estimated 35 million roaming a century earlier.  Some experts were resigned to the species’ eventual extinction due to killing, grazing, and partitioning of open lands.

Drought.  Uncounted thousands of acres of Juniper trees have been clear-cut in Oregon in recent years sanctioned and funded by federal agencies and the State of Oregon. This devastation, studied and strangely rationalized, doesn't cause drought directly.  Global heating, air currents, damming and draining, are among many complex factors.

Over a hundred hunting features and kill locales are now documented in Nevada and Eastern California.  For example, the archaeological research and ethnographic studies in the Great Basin by Brooke S. Arkush, Brian Hockett, and Patrick M. Lubinski.

An interesting article, undated without documentation: “What is the cultural significance of pronghorns to native americans?” https://www.aaanativearts.com/what-is-the-cultural-significance-of-pronghorns-to-native-americans

Recommended: Prairie Ghost: Pronghorn and Human Interaction in Early America

Richard E. McCabe, Henry M. Reeves, Bart W. O’Gara. 2010.