Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Dumb pronghorn question.

No, not a question about dumb pronghorn, the dumbness is on my part. Since both male and female pronghorn have horns, how do you tell one from the other? Since I drew a female tag, this would probably be useful information to have.
DAL

If it has a black patch on the head don't shoot it.

not all females have horns, and the black patch up by the head are good giveaways. also, if they are in groups depending on group size, probably only one, maybe two, bucks in there.

have fun... i didn't get a goat tag this year, and i really miss it already - and season isn't open yet!

The female lopes rarely have horns over a couple inches. In fact, most of the time you won't notice them at all. If it has horns over 4" don't shoot. Pretty simple to tell what not to shoot.

Thanks, everybody, for the info. Now comes the hard part--locating and shooting one. One thing's for sure: I like pronghorn meat even more than elk. Mmmm!
DAL

And Then comes the best part........getting those chops off the grill!!!

Make it your best day

Mark D

I am going tomorrow morning...I am looking for a particularly large dumb one w/cheek patch.
Like others have said black cheek patch = buck
no patch = doe

Be careful about locating "one" and shooting it. Very embarassing to walk up to it and find out it is a fawn and not much bigger than a jack rabbit. Of course then you don't have to cut it up, you can just grill it whole.

It is unbelievably hilarious as long as it is not you that pulled the trigger.

lol a friend of mine did that on his first long shot at a deer. he lined up a doe, pulled the trigger. the doe dropped, he walked the 350 yards to the doe. said "aw [bleep]" and promptly picked it up with one hand. very funny indeed, glad it wasnt me.

I killed doe with horns a couple of years ago they were about 4 inches long and very wispey and not visable from 270 yards away even thru a 15 power scope. freaked me out for a second when I walked up to her and saw horns. tom

oh, you are so, so right... it will make you fall over laughin' when your buddy pulls that goat up and it is the same size as a fox! never laughed so hard in my life. especially since it was shot w/ a 308 - which meant almost zero edible meat left on the thing.

to spot a fawn... look for a hornless goat all by himself, w/ a very short nose and very tall mohawk. if it has those qualities, they are very cute, indeed, but not worth the time to stalk, shoot, and gut.

good luck on the hunt... goats are a riot, ranking 2nd only to mule deer on my list of fun hunts. i suppose whitetails would make the list somewhere, but not even top 5, and maybe not top-10... antelope is fun, and i find it to be the tastiest of all game meat.

When I still owned that P.O.S. Ruger #1 I shot at a buck and heard a "whack". Then the buck ran away and I saw an antelope kicking in the grass. When we got up to it I saw it was a doe. She must have been bedded pretty far behind him because none of us saw her. I could never get that gun to shoot right, but I thought it was "close enough". Dumb move on my part. Smart move on my part was selling the gun.

I was the goat this year by shooting one of those fawns, it looked like it was really far away.

In 1986 I shot a 4 point mulie doe in Idaho. She was partly in the brush and all I could see was the left side antler and the body. I shot it and walked up and and found that the left side antler was about 18" tall and what should have been about 24" wide but the right side antler was a 10" spike that was still in velvet in November. I rolled it over and was amazed to find an udder instead of the normal accoutrement!
When I checked it in, the F&G asked me for the head if I wasn't going to save it.

I was told by a regular campfire member, who's initials are Cheah <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> that he had just shot a good representative 140 lb Georgie doe. When I walked over and picked it up by the neck, Cheah about wet his pants laughing...as did I. Pretty dang funny how "ground shrinkage" took over <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> Flinch

i remember that thread and pic... funny stuff!
still, at this time of year, and antelope fawn may not be half the size of that piece of tenderloin your hangin' on to...

I am hoping to figure out how to add my pic of ground shrinkage. Nice head shot though...