Antelope

You get to watching the same animals and grow rather attached even though they are wild. That happened with Tri-pod, a three legged antelope. Whether he lost his leg to a bullet and then gangrene, or whether a fence ripped it, I don't know but he had two hind legs and one front leg. Every fall he'd show up behind our house and stay all winter. Come spring he'd disappear. That happened for about five years and even though he had know sentimental mussy feelings for us, we did for him and have always wondered what happened that he never returned.

With the does and fawns it is harder to tell which ones are which, except in size.

The bucks it is a no-brainer when they get their horns - they shed them each year. Some have a narrow spread, others wide, and a few are just down right strange. This is a medium sized buck. Note the white hair sticking straight up on his butt. What you can't hear is the sudden forceful expulsion of air that he is emitting telling me he's alarmed and STAY AWAY. Of course all he'll do is run away, up to 65mph run away. I've clocked them when I was traveling down a country road and they were on the other side of the fence running.

This is that same family but on a different day. I've been taking my camera every day to the corrals trying to get close up shots. RIGHT, ha! These are with a telephoto lens. The only time I could have gotten a close up was when I didn't have my camera. I know they knew that! If I just slow down, they take off. It's how we use to hunt them. Someone would keep driving and the designated hunter would hop out of the truck without it stopping. Yes! we slowed down but way before the antelope and not so much when the hunter stepped out, so it didn't appear we were changing out pace.

When my dad managed a good sized ranch, we would hunt the ones that had been feeding off the grain and alfalfa feeds. Feedlot fed, we use to call them and they were good. If they have been eating sagebrush, the dog won't even eat the meat. What an animal has been eating makes a huge difference. Take lamb for instance. Can't stand to eat one if it has been grazing in our pastures but put it on a little grain and alfalfa and yum, yum.