Through the years, hunters have given the pronghorn antelope nicknames such as "desert racer," "prairie ghost," "speed goat," and "sagebrush rocket"--and for good reason. Capable of reaching speeds up to 60 miles per hour--some say even faster--only the African cheetah is faster among land mammals and only in short bursts at that. In a quarter-mile sprint, the cheetah would win by a nose or two, but in a longer race, the pronghorn with its greater endurance would leave the spotted cat choking in its dust. Its oversized trachea, huge lungs for its overall body size, and a heart to match enable this amazing animal to take in and use great quantities of oxygen, the primary reason it can run like the wind for miles.

The pronghorn antelope is unique to America, and it is the only living member of its family in the world. Before the white man came along and spoiled the West, it outnumbered bison at what was once estimated at upwards of 70 million animals. A single herd observed by the Lewis and Clark expedition stretched over 60 miles and contained an estimated one million animals.

Then came farmers and ranchers and market hunters, and the slaughter was on. Within a few decades, an animal species that had inhabited the North American continent for 20 million years had vanished from much of the West. By the early 1900s, only about 15,000 pronghorns had survived.

While market hunters are to be blamed for pushing America's antelope to the brink of extinction, sport hunters who bought hunting licenses must be given a lion's share of the credit for bringing its population back to what it is today. Dollars spent by hunters funded various conservation programs that began during the 1920s, one of which was a big increase in the number of game wardens. Animals were live-trapped in areas of their greatest numbers and transplanted where there were none. And it all worked, too, for it is estimated that more than a million pronghorns now reside in the United States and several Canadian provinces.

About half of the antelope population in the United States is in the state of Wyoming, where they actually outnumber human residents. Montana has the second highest pronghorn population, followed by South Dakota and Colorado. I am not sure where New Mexico ranks in overall numbers, but during more than 40 years of hunting antelope in various states, I have taken my two all-time best bucks there.

I began hunting antelope in Wyoming during the mid-1960s, and both my wife and I have taken good bucks there. I have also taken a couple in Texas, which is not often thought of as an antelope state due to the lack of public hunting grounds. Other antelope hunting states include Oregon, Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona, North Dakota, and Kansas, although not all offer nonresident permits.

The pronghorn is the first big-game animal I hunted west of the Mississippi, and this holds true for many easterners for a variety of reasons. For starters, most outfitters charge less for an antelope hunt than for other big game simply because it costs them less than a backpack hunt for sheep or a pack train to the high country for elk or moose. On an antelope hunt, you usually stay in a lodge, a motel in town, or perhaps at a ranch house.

Actually, antelope hunting does not necessarily require the services of an outfitter, and this puts its price within reach of most hunters who can afford to buy enough gas to get there.