Hunting Pronghorns by Horseback in a Wyoming Blizzard

Antelope hunting has gradually evolved around the four-wheel-drive vehicle, which makes the horseback method a deliberate step backward and, for some hunters, a better test of the pursuit. When snow drifts pile up and the engine becomes a liability rather than an asset, a saddle horse crosses ground a jeep cannot. The pronghorn’s small, hard hoofs demand solid footing, and those same conditions that pin antelope to certain terrain also decide how you reach them.

We arrived in the Wind River country around Dubois, Wyoming, east of the Continental Divide, in the middle of a storm, Dr. Joe Reno and I shaking hands in the snow before the hunt even started. Reno is an orthopedic surgeon based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and he had come west for the same pronghorns I had. The hunt, which Charles Elliott recounted in the July 1961 issue of Outdoor Life under the title “Phantom Pronghorns,” makes a plain case for the horse over the vehicle when weather turns hard.

Why a Horse Beats a Jeep in Deep Snow

Les Shoemaker chose the saddle route rather than using a jeep for the antelope hunt. His reasoning rested on both terrain and principle. Spring Mountain rises 9,000 feet above the valley floor, and the hunt played out on its high benches and mesas, where drifts ran up to three feet deep. On the level ground of that 9,000-foot mountain, the snow ran deeper than half a foot. A vehicle bogs down in that country. A horse keeps moving.

Shoemaker’s preference was not purely practical. He considered stalking a pronghorn by horseback more of a challenge than using a vehicle, and that view carries weight given his background. For years he had worked as a U.S. Forest Service ranger, which is to say he knew the backcountry and chose the harder, older way of covering it. His wife Alice could run a pack string and was proficient with a gun, a lash rope, a skillet, and the rest of the equipment that comes with working horses rather than engines.

The pronghorn’s only safety on open plains and mesas lies in its speed, and that speed is what makes the animal so hard to approach by any method. In snow, though, the antelope’s movement becomes readable. The antelope trails crossing the snow on the high mesa all led downhill, a sign the animals were dropping off the exposed high country toward shelter and feed. Reading those trails is worth more than ground speed, and it is easier done at a horse’s pace than from behind a windshield.

The Country and the Ranch

The hunt centered on the Amoretti Ranch, a long-established dude outfit of the Dubois area, which carries the brand E A. The ranch sits along Horse Creek and spans an enormous stretch of Spring Mountain. Its activity now mostly revolves around horses and cattle, and the wildlife density is such that moose, elk, and mule deer herds routinely wander across the front yard.

Shoemaker steered the party toward the Amoretti for the antelope, telling them the best hunting might be found on that ranch, and he backed that with observation of where the animals concentrate. By Elliott’s account, a sizable share of the Wind River area’s antelope herd works Spring Mountain’s slopes and the terrain around it. That concentration matters to a hunter planning a limited window. The Wind River area antelope hunt runs under a capped number of tags, with 50 permits split evenly between resident and nonresident hunters; a nonresident pronghorn license cost $25 in that area.

Timing is its own consideration. Wyoming generally runs a September antelope season, though the Dubois country in the Wind River area provided antelope shooting during October, late enough that early storms can roll in and change the character of a hunt entirely. Herd strength shifts with conditions from one stretch of the state to the next; the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has noted that pronghorn numbers in some regions declined under a run of harsh winters and poor fawn survival before mild winters and improved fawn production helped them recover.

How the Hunt Unfolded

The hunters took a 4 a.m. breakfast on the second day and reached the E A corral at daybreak, with Don Bleak serving as guide. The weather was severe enough that the first hours produced nothing but cold. Around midmorning, the guide brought the party down off the high bench into a canyon stand of timber and got a fire going. The narrator’s watch showed only 9 o’clock when they stopped to build a fire, which tells you how brutally the wind was cutting into the effort.

After warming up, the hunters saw their first buck antelope at least a mile away. Distance was the enemy of judgment: even through binoculars, they could not judge the size of the buck’s horns at that distance. This is the practical reality of glassing antelope across snow-swept open country, where a mile of white ground flattens any read on trophy quality and forces you to close the gap before you can decide whether an animal is worth the stalk.

The horse-mounted approach let them work that gap across drifted ground a vehicle could not have crossed. The hunt earned its title honestly, antelope that disappear against snow and distance, hence the “Phantom Pronghorns” name under which the account ran.

The horseback method is not the only way hunters handle pronghorn in heavy weather, and a separate Montana hunt shows what a mobile, spot-and-stalk approach looks like under the same kind of sky. Montana Outdoor reported that Walker Heckman hunted pronghorn in Montana with his brother Cade, and after an opening day that produced no harvest, a day-two blizzard was when they spotted a group of antelope at the first spot they checked, stalked them through the hills, and put a buck on the ground.

What the Blizzard Teaches About Method

When drifts run three feet deep on a 9,000-foot mountain, a horse is the tool that keeps you hunting, and a guide who knows the country will trade speed for access without hesitation. Shoemaker’s choice of the saddle was grounded in terrain that defeats a jeep and in a conviction that the harder approach is the better one.

Snow makes pronghorn trails legible and herds easier to locate, even as it punishes the hunter who reads it wrong. On Spring Mountain, that meant leaving the jeep at the corral and saddling up. The hunter who adjusted to the blizzard rather than waiting it out had a chance at an animal the weather had pushed into the open.

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