As many photographers will attest to, the normal view you get of these creatures is their derriere as they run away from you. They are notoriously skittish and not likely to hang around when humans are present.
Yesterday though I had a fantastic opportunity coming across a herd of 40 or so of them in northern Colorado. They were certainly wary and they did back off and keep their distance but thankfully not so far that I couldn’t get some nice captures of them in the snowy fields.
They are the fastest land animal in the Western Hemisphere and second in the world only to the Cheetah. Pronghorn can sprint at speeds up to 60mph and run for extraordinarily long distances at slower speeds.
Before the arrival of western Europeans, it is believed as many as 40 million of them roamed the open rangelands of North America – possibly more than there were bison. Hunting and fragmentation of their habitat by fences and human settlements took its toll and as few as 20,000 remained at the start of the 20th century. Thankfully conservation and education saved them from extinction and they now number almost 1 million.
Taken in Larimer County, Colorado.
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