The Adventure Begins!
 Since moving to Colorado Springs in 1991, I have often seen herds of pronghorn antelope grazing in the surrounding grasslands.  Pronghorn antelope were a daily sight on my drive to Schriever and Peterson Air Force bases during my service in the United States Air Force and later as a government contractor. In high school, my class would study Native American cave drawings depicting antelope hunts, an example shown in Figure 1.  Growing up on the east coast in Pennsylvania, the pronghorn was and still is known as a symbol of the great West â the famed American frontier of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Southwest. This was a place far away from city life, where history comes alive, and dreams can come true.
In 2020, I took an interest in observing pronghorn close up, studying their habits, behaviors, movements, and artifacts such as footprints, droppings, skeletal remains, and shed horns. I made other wildlife observations such as blooming cactuses, prowling coyotes, sprinting jack rabbits, soaring eagles, perching red tail hawks, and the fluttering of various small birds. The serenity and quiet of the seemingly endless and timeless grassland, a feeling of insignificance and smallness within the harsh and vast outdoors of Godâs immense and pristine creation, was of particular awe. The thought that pronghorn only live to about 10 years in the wild brought to mind how quickly our time on Earth is fleeting â what are we to do in this short time?  Several family members have joined me on safari, shown proudly with their horn finds in Figure 2.
Figure 1. Ancient Pronghorn Petroglyph
 Petroglyphs from Buckskin Gulch in Southern Utah exemplify how the
Native Americans of the American Southwest revered and hunted pronghorn.
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Figure 2. Family Adventurists and Finding Horns
From left to right are wife LaDonna, son Benjamin, and brother Don.
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Above all else, exploring pronghorn presented a life opportunity. For example, in Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn, author John Byers originally from upstate New York spent many years observing pronghorn by traveling to the remote north-west prairies of the National Bison Range in western Montana. I had a rare and unique opportunity to study a pronghorn herd in my own Colorado neighborhood, although the rapid housing development would quickly diminish this opportunity â the time was now!
Surprisingly, pronghorn thrive very close to human populations as the battle for prairie acreage is waged and repeatedly won by the bulldozer. The pronghorn live their daily lives and thrive in any open grassland, farmland, or cow pasture along the Colorado Front Range.  As farm and ranch land gave way to housing developments, the pronghorn enjoyed hanging around in their territory right up until the moment houses were built.  After all, the pronghorn were the first to mark their territory, as discussed later. Many of my observations were made on pronghorn in a new housing development where families were moving in, just south of the thick pine tree groves in Black Forest, Colorado. The tan areas shown in Google Map âSatelliteâ view in Figure 3 were heavily populated by local herds, while Figures, 4, 5, and 6 show pronghorn in action on the ground in these areas.Â
Figure 3. Aerial Suburban Map and Adjacent Pronghorn Territory
The green arrow shows a distance of 1 mile. Pronghorn thrive right alongside housing development areas. See new housing development roads in bulldozed areas south of the dark colored forested Black Forest at the top of the map.Â
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Introducing the âwho, what, where, why and howâ has been covered thus far. In the pages ahead, I will expound in word and picture some of the detailed observations and discoveries during my pronghorn safaris.
Figure 4. Confused Pronghorn Traverses a Home Site
Pronghorn have been seen hanging around in their territory right up until
the moment houses are built. See the pronghorn standing in a house lot
and the unpaved road with curb visible in the foreground.Â
Figure 5. Pronghorn at Twilight
A pronghorn overlooks his past home prairie land, now overrun by home builders and bulldozers.Â
Figure 6. Pronghorn Roaming Once-Familiar Territory
These beautiful pronghorn pictures were taken from my car, parked on a newly constructed unpaved road in the newly built neighborhood. Â Pronghorn are not afraid of cars. If a human was standing there, the pronghorn would stay much further away.
