Let's visit on the Porch II (Helena, Laurel: loft, bungalow, rental)

[Reziac]

Dug three buckets of carrots (didn't want to leave 'em in the ground, had too many tips rotting off). Now debating whether the advice to clean 'em in the washing machine is wisdom or folly.

[MTSilvertip]

Too funny

Just a few inches of snow today, wouldn't have been to bad except for the freezing rain before that really sticks to the windshield.

I keep thinking the calendar says October but my yard says January...

Antelope season starts Saturday, I look forward to it all year. Usually such nice Indian Summer weather, frosty mornings, daytime highs in the 60s, all the fall foliage as the cottonwoods turn bright yellow and the willows bright red in the creek bottoms.

The prairie grass is golden and framed by bright blue mountains with pristine white caps.

Normally it's the most beautiful and special time of year.

Looks like I'm going to be frosting my rump as I slog through the snow and mud this year.

Oh well, I get to hunt my favorite game animal in my favorite place on Earth, so what's a little snow?

[Reziac]

Most gorgeous sight ever is a sunlit field of golden stubble... peeking through a blanket of undisturbed snow.

Except, of course, when I have to drive through it!!

Had so many antelope up by Clarkston, they were like rats. Two big herds and several small bands. About all you'd have to do is go up to the corner where the road turns hard right at the top of the hill, and wait a bit. Haven't seen any over near Laurel, tho I'd be surprised if there aren't some north of town (enough deer up there that night driving is hazardous). So what does antelope taste like?

[MTSilvertip]

If handled properly, cleaned, cooled, protected from the sun and dirt, and if you take the animal cleanly without wounding and chasing it for miles, it's a very sweet and delicate meat.
Very subtle flavor that accepts savory herbs like rosemary or tyme well. I like to stuff a clove of garlic inside a steak, and roast the steak over a bed of coals. Baste with a little butter, it's a hunting camp dream.

Because of the nature of the animal and it's ability to run 60 miles an hour for miles and miles, it can get very hot and have a lot of adrenaline, so quick clean kills with good shot placement are paramount.

Dragging it through sagebrush, dirt and cactus for miles don't help, and because their hair is an excellent insulator, keeping them clean and cool is vital to getting that choice meat. Too many people don't invest the effort and that delectable meat can be unbelievably strong smelling and harsh flavor. It can be either the best or worst wild game to eat, it all depends on how it's handled.

Pronghorn Antelope are unique in the world, not closely related to any other animal, although they are distantly related to mountain goats, which aren't really a goat by the way.

The only meat I've ever found that has a somewhat similar flavor is kangaroo.

It's my favorite wild meat, and I've eaten a lot of game meat from a lot of species. They're small animals so each morsel should be treasured and consumed with a deep appreciation of the spectacular pronghorn antelope.

They're an American original and have been speeding over Montana prairies since the days of mammoths and sabertooth cats. They've outlived the megafauna extinction at the end of the last ice age, and are a living link to our prehistoric past.

Beautiful, graceful, tough and Hardy they're supremely adapted to prairie life.

Sorry to ramble, but I truly admire them. Plus they taste great!!!!

[Reziac]

That explains why some people love antelope, and others say it tastes awful. If ever I have occasion to hunt antelope, I will remember this advice!

So how much meat is on the average animal? any preference doe vs buck?

Ramble on; this is stuff most of us never hear about!

[MTSilvertip]

Okay ��

A very big buck weighs around 120 lbs live weight, more often around 100. The does are smaller usually 75-80 lbs.

Figure on about 40% of live weight for meat once processed. If taken and handled properly, I haven't noticed a significant difference in the quality and taste of the meat. It's all good.

They look good sized out on the prairie, but a buck only stands about 3 feet tall at the shoulder.
That's part of the problem inexperienced hunters have making a good shot. They look closer than they are when you don't have a reference point of known size to compare. It's really easy to overshoot, undershoot, or worse, wound.

At one time there were 2 species of pronghorn antelope. One was smaller and had 4 horns. Fossils have been found in the la Brea tar pits. The smaller species went extinct, I've never seen that anyone knows why.

We do know why the pronghorn evolved such blinding speed. There used to be a species of American Cheetah, and a long legged hyena in North America during the last ice age. They're gone, but the pronghorn's amazing abilities remain.
They have oversized hearts and lungs, and their windpipe is double the size of comparable animals. Their leg bones are about the circumference of a man's finger, but much stronger than a grown bovine steer leg bones that's many times larger.
Their large dark eyes can see comparable to looking through 8 power binoculars. They have long eyelashes similar to a camel to both shade the eye from sun and blowing dust. The white ruff on their butts is puffed when they're spooked to alert other antelope. That white rump can be seen for miles by others in the herd.

Everything about them is designed for speed, endurance and life on the open prairie. It's really amazing how well they're suited to such a hostile environment, but yet are so small and appear so delicate.

I'm a big fan of just about all wildlife, but the pronghorn is really something special as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah most folks call them derogatory names like speed goat, but they don't have the size and power of an elk or moose, they can't jump obstacles like a deer. They have no tusks or talons, all they have for defense is speed.

For such a small animal, they're as tough as any on Earth and thrive against predators, man and hostile climate conditions.
They've got my respect, and even Lewis and Clark wrote about them in their journals.

They aren't the stars of the hunting world like elk, not big or dangerous like a buffalo. But they really deserve a special place in the pantheon of exceptional animals.

[Reziac]

Species go extinct all the time ... sometimes they disappear, other times they change and leave their old form behind, and sometimes they didn't exist as separate species in the first place. Might be the four-horners were not actually a different species but a variant branch like four-horned sheep vs normal sheep. Did you see where Jack Horner determined that four 'species' of dinosaur were actually just one species at different stages of maturity?

Interesting that they outlasted their major predators, tho.

Lots of cool info, thanks.

[MTSilvertip]

Glad you liked it. I'd thought of the variant subspecies hypothesis too. Lots of examples, just look at dogs.

I'm more a fan of Bob Baaker over Horner because Baaker still likes dinosaurs. Horner seems to just look at them as laboratory specimens instead of the living, breathing animals they once were.

The end of the last ice age brought about massive extinctions of some spectacular animals that evolved in North America. Camels and horses for instance are North America and went extinct here for some reason, but thrived in Asia and Europe.

Giant Beaver, ground sloths, the giant bison, American Rhino, all gone with the ice. Even the Clovis and pre Clovis people that came from Europe on the ice sheets 20,000 years ago seem to disappear from the record making room for the Folsom people coming from Asia about 9 -10,000 years ago that became the American Indian.

The history of the species and people's of this planet is endlessly fascinating to me.

[Reziac]

Tell me what you think of this rock...

[MTSilvertip]

Looks like chert.
Is that some pressure flaking?