Late summer is raging in Montana.
As the crow flies, I am 1175 ml. from Yellowknife, directly due south. This is enough of a distance for the temperature to be 33 degrees higher. According to Google Earth right now, it is 50F. in Yellowknife, while it is 83 F. here. And, a not insignificant detail, the sun is shining full blast. Its heartwarming beams fill the Montana sky, and exorcise the memories of all the cold, windy, rainy northern weather. Summer has cheered me up, and any bad memories of my journey so far, evaporate in the heat. Now I'm starting to regret that I sent my shorts home in one of my parcels.
This is real beach weather.
I haven't travelled east or west, so there is no need to reset my watch. That is an additional pleasure.
I spend the day in and around the hotel. I do my emails, file my photographs, and watch the Hungarian news on the internet. I don't hear much good news...
I give my sleeping bag a thorough shaking, and, for safety's sake, do it out in the corridor, far away from my room. I still don't know what it was that bit me so badly. The spots on my lower arm just won't go, though they seem a little bit fainter today. It would not be good if my undiscovered torturers moved into my sleeping bag permanently.
I'm getting ready to travel tomorrow. If all goes according to plan, Babsie Bishop, my outfitter, will pick me up at the hotel and drive me out to the new hunting ground.
I'm about to hunt pronghorn.
The famous pronghorn, (Antilocapra americana), is a familiar prairie animal and a special prize.
Unlike other horned deer, the pronghorn sheds its antlers every year, and then grows a new set.
It spends its life in a sort of schizophrenia, as, while actually being an antelope, it behaves as if it were a deer. It has few enemies, but is still able to run at speeds of up to 50mph. over short distances. Even the females have horns, but they rarely grow much longer than their ears, a useful bit of information when trying to tell the sexes apart. Its horns are extraordinarily beautiful.
Many mountain hunters might disagree with me, but I think that the horns, which bend inward and back, give the trophy a special beauty, which the indiscriminately spiralling horns of the ram can never achieve.
Like several of its unfortunate fellow species, the pronghorn was almost extinct by the first quarter of the 20th century; the population, previously estimated at 30 m. declined to 20,000. Whoever
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blames that on hunting is either misinformed or malicious. Although guns were responsible for the reduction of the species, those people were not hunters in the modern sense.
Not everyone who carries a gun is a hunter.
The "hunters" of the time carried out the mass slaughter of the antelopes primarily for their meat.
They didn't know, because they couldn't know, just what damage they were doing to the population. Individual hunters had no idea of the changes they were causing to the numbers of animals. To each hunter the apparently limitless herds must have seemed inexhaustible. I don't think it fair for posterity, using hindsight, to judge the hunters and events of so many decades ago.
However, by being declared a protected species, the antelopes managed to evade extinction, and now there are over 1 m. roaming over America, mainly in the mid-western states. Today's stalkers and conservationists, descendants of those early hunters, have learned that nowhere in the world is there such a thing as an inexhaustible supply of animals.
The pronghorn is highly esteemed by Americans. We might reasonably expect that the front cover of the SCI record book dealing with North American animals would bear the image of one of the legendary game species, like the brown bear, or the moose; but, in fact, on the cover we can see Tom Mansaranez' photo entitled "Evening Light", showing a beautifully photographed pronghorn antelope, gazing over the prairie at twilight.
The average weight of this species, which is indigenous to the US, and often referred to as a
"goat" by locals, rarely exceeds 130lbs. and the height, to its withers, is a maximum of 3ft. Its brown, or reddish-brown color is broken by bands and dots of white on its stomach, undertail, chest and head. The undertail serves as an alarm signal to its fellows: when it flashes out over the prairie, everybody has to start running. Males can easily be distinguished by their black masks, which are absent in the females. Their eyes are almost the size of a horse's, giving it the largest eyes, relative to body size, of any mammal. It has an odd habit of having no special time to rest or feed. If it's hungry, it eats, and if it's tired, it rests. This is not good news for hunters, as it makes its behavior totally unpredictable. Apart from that, it is considered one of the easiest types of big game to hunt. Its habitat provides few opportunities for it to hide, so tracking it is not a difficult task. It has adapted well to a dry climate, and can survive for days without water: during these times it can only obtain water from its food, but it manages well. According to the books, stalking it is very like hunting roe deer on the Great Hungarian Plain.
And this time I must be prepared to take some long-distance shots, though I feel I've already started to get used to them.
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It has five separate sub-species, but fortunately the record books do not require us to distinguish between them. The record size for a left horn is 17.87 ins. and that for a right, 17.75 ins. but the final evaluation must also take the diameter of the base of the horn into consideration.
This animal is the prime reason for my visit to Montana; that's why I'm here. If, however, I manage to bag a male with nice horns quite quickly, - and I stand a good chance - then I'll have some time left for a traditional pheasant hunt. Today is the 6th, we go to the hunting ground on the 7th, so I hope the pronghorn hunt will start on the 8th at the latest. My plane ticket back to Alaska is booked for the 11th.
According to Frank the pronghorn are very plentiful, so I could be successful in just two days. If all goes well, I should be holding a shotgun in my hands on the 12th. I'm not taking my own gun, so I will have to ask Babsie if I can borrow one of his for the hunt. I'm not worried that it will be a problem. I've met several hunters, each with a minimum of 10 guns - one of them actually had 30.
This excursion looks as if it will be good fun, though the pheasants don't really have anything to worry about. Despite my long use of a rifle, I have very little experience with a shotgun. I've always hunted big game, and have hardly ever been to the Great Hungarian Plain to shoot pheasants in the bushes; and I've never been on a proper pheasant hunt. Bearing all this in mind, I just want to point out that it is unlikely that I will achieve any spectacular scores on my pheasant hunt. But one thing's for certain: this hunt, in the pleasant summer heat, will be a welcome change from all those hunts up in the polar regions, like the Arctic Circle.
I'm really looking forward to it!
In the evening I drink lots of beers, though I have to employ various tricks to get them.
If there's one thing I don't like about America, it's that in many places it is very difficult to get hold of alcohol. Here, you can't say "I'm just popping out to the shop to buy some beer". That's not how it works here. In the average supermarket there's either no beer - which is most frequent - or there's beer but no spirits. Spirits are only sold in special shops, of which there are very few, and which never seem to be open when I'm there (that's why Jake Ensign, my fellow tippler, told me not to forget to buy some at the airport duty-free shop. But, because of that damned United Airlines I was in such a state of nervous collapse I completely forgot.) Whoever goes hunting in the US should take several hip-flasks with him. There are some states where they don't even sell beer at the gas stations! All these prohibition rules drive me nuts. For instance, you are not allowed to drink in the street.
Insane!
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Tomorrow I shall have to discuss it with my guide. We will have to sort it out, as I'm not looking forward to the next few days being completely dry.
Babsie Bishop's House
The Town of Malta
Montana