Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Do pronghorn/antelope see color?

What about using UV free detergent?

dont matter, dont look like a person standing there and they dont pay you much attention, if anything they will walk closer to see just what you are.....great eyesight but dumb as a rock and curious as hell.....

agree with rattler...

+1

I don't think they are really dumb, they just think they can out run bullets.

Old bucks/herds that have been shot at get fairly wily.

Just don't use blue tape on the muzzle of your rifle. They can see that for miles, or so I've been told.

could be Sam........but it aint that hard to get most of them to start thinking "WTF is that? i better go get a closer look....."

my wife thought i was full of chit when i told her we could play cow and just walk up on some......started at over 500 yards away ended at 200, the whole time walking in their view.....whole time she kept mumbling "I cant [bleep] believe they are just standing there looking at us?!?!"

Pronghorn must not see too well, as there is better success on them than any other big game animal in Oregon. When one does not stand out structually, I've had them walk by at 20 ft of so while wearing all kinds of blue and orange.

Sitting in the shade makes one almost invisible. Appearing in the skyline though, is the kiss of death.

i think the success rate comes from the fact they dont try to hide......and as i understand it the big bucks tend to be younger than say a big, wise, old whitetail or mule deer.....

Opening morning I found a herd about 2.4 miles from the lookout.
About 30 head in sight so I walked over. They were strung out grazing when I got close, couldn't see the whole herd and one little buck spotted me and boogied the whole herd.
They hauled ass almost 1 mile away(huge coulee), circled and came back to within' 100 yards.

Pretty neat.

Later that same morning two lone bucks tried to act like whitetails.

Goofy critters.

definitely goofy, and my favorite critter to chase......love hunting the lil bastards

Me too...had antelope backstrap for supper tonight!

So no matter what you wear if you have 4 legs or appear broken up they do not run.

True that,

Mark

I have read that they can see the color blue. But I agree they see movement at 1 mile easily. Maybe not color so much, but movement yes.

They are fun to hunt too...

Actually, their eyesight is supposedly the equivalent of 8X binos, so it's not any lack of vision that gets them in trouble. Sometimes it's their curiosity. Sometimes it's their intense focus on guarding their harems. If the gals don't spook, your odds of closing the distance go up dramatically. And sometimes they just let their guard down, confident that their primary defenses -- vision and speed -- will get them out of a jam. But I agree they can be super goofy at times, and apart from being a classic spot-and-stalk animal, that makes them a helluva lot of fun to hunt.

You want goofy? This one was fasinated by my long camera lens. He started to leave four or five times, but kept coming back to give me the retarded puppy staredown.

Like any other animal, they're meat. The only real advantage any of them has is they understand that.

I don't honestly believe any animal is truly smart. They are wily and they do learn and remember, but that's about the extent of it. I think they also understand their ability to blend in to their surroundings. (or in the case of some, to stand out -- with bright colors as a warning to most every other critter they encounter) The rest is simply natures instinct for survival. Add instinct to the abilities to learn and remember and some critters can be quite a challenge to successfully hunt. Including those whose nature is to "hide" in plain sight and/or run like your butts on fire at the first sign of danger.

They will look right at you while you are wearing orange and not react if you don�t look like a human. This year I saw one coming to the ridge I was behind. I skirted down the ridge and went to ground MPAJ and the thing came over the ridge 50 yards away, looked right at me, and went down to the water hole 50 yards to my right. I was in plain view the entire time. I aleady anticipated that he would go to the water hole and had my rifle on the ground pointing toward the water hole. I raised my rifle off the ground sideways and shot him. I have taken others while I was in plain view, but this was the closest. BTW, I do wear a face mask and camo in addition to the orange vest. Oh, my orange has some "tree branches" in it to break up the solid color.

Spot on. Great eyesight and incredible speed are their two main 'defenses.'

As for curiousity, MANY animals and MAMMALS are "curious," at least once. Even dumbazz HUMANS!