Latin name: Antilocapra americana
Size: 3–5 feet long and 90–150 pounds (males)
Texas habitat: The Panhandle, far West Texas, and San Angelo
When they hit their top speeds of nearly 60 miles per hour, pronghorn kick up clouds of dust that swirl in their wake. Only cheetahs can sprint faster. With their curved black horns, white patches along the neck, and dramatic eyelashes, these ungulates (hooved mammals) exude intensity. Otherworldly, ancient creatures, they seem to have time traveled from another era. In fact, they pretty much did!
What do you mean by time travel?
Pronghorn are essentially the last of their kind, having evolved at least 12,000 years ago, when a dazzling array of megafauna roamed our continent: woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and—crucially for pronghorn—the North American cheetah. To outrun that fearsome predator, pronghorn developed super speed and endurance. Their contemporaries went extinct long ago, while they stuck around. Folks often mistake pronghorn for antelope, but their closest surviving relatives are giraffes and okapis.
Where do they live in Texas?
The state has three populations. The largest is in the Panhandle, with about 12,870 pronghorn, followed by the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas, with an estimated 6,865, and a contingent of 140 or so outside San Angelo. “Last year’s survey indicated an increasing trend, so that’s a good thing,” says Shawn Gray, the mule deer and pronghorn program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife, who heads efforts to monitor and protect the animals. But pronghorn still face three major threats: drought (which dries up the shrubs and grasses they eat), habitat loss, and fences.
Fences?
Because pronghorn refuse to jump over them, and these days most of Texas is fenced in. This confines the animals to smaller areas than evolution intended, facilitating the spread of parasites and making pronghorn vulnerable to predation from coyotes. There’s a simple solution, though: adding an eighteen-inch gap under fences gives pronghorn room to wriggle through. “We’ve worked with ranchers to modify or replace hundreds of miles of fence line,” says Gray. With this fix, the prairie phenoms can once again roam free.
What else is unusual about them?
Their defensive tactics are something else. When threatened, pronghorn raise the white hair on their rump as an alarm signal for the rest of the herd. Raising the hair also clears the way for their musk glands to release a pungent odor that some say smells like buttered popcorn; Gray think it’s closer to that of Fritos. In addition to their rumps, these odiferous critters also have scent glands on the sides of their heads, along their backs, and even in their hooves, which boast antimicrobial properties to help fight off bacteria from the soil.
Pronghorn are also blessed with superior eyesight, so they can spot predators approaching from far away. And they’re highly inquisitive: Native American hunters learned to lure them in by waving a flag or stick, which the curious critters couldn’t resist investigating up close. Some hunters still use the same tactic, known as flagging. (Pronghorn hunting is very limited in Texas, with thousands of hunters applying for just a handful of permits on public land. More options exist on private land, but Texas can’t compare to states such as Wyoming and Montana, where the species is much more common.)
Are they territorial?
Very. To mark their territory, the males perform a ritual called the SPUD, which stands for Sniff, Paw, Urinate, and Defecate. “Then, if another male tries to come in, it’s on,” says Gray. “It’s actually pretty cool—the buck will run the other guy out of there, and he’ll stop exactly where his territory ends.” Male pronghorn compete for harems of many females, in a manner that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen Love Island. “Say the dominant male is off breeding a doe, and then another younger buck might come in. He’s a little sneaky and breeds another doe without the big guy knowing,” Gray says. Oh deer!
An abbreviated version of this article originally appeared in the July 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “Pronghorn.” Subscribe today.
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