The pronghorn buck was facing the wrong way and the light was fading.
It was early September. Zyven Boyd had been tracking the buck for at least an hour. He and a friend spotted it while scouting along Cameron Lake Road on the Colville Reservation.
They watched it move through a field toward a small group of does. Once it was on land he could hunt, Boyd and his friend got out and moved toward it. They crouch-walked and then crawled through tall grass, sneaking forward whenever the buck’s head was down.
Now they were within range. The buck just kept grazing, facing straight away from them.
Time was running short.
“It was in the evening, sun was going down,” Boyd said. “We was hoping he would give us a shot.”
About 15 minutes went by. Then, finally, the buck left the rest of the herd and turned broadside.
Boyd balanced the rifle on his knee, leaned up against his friend and took aim at history.
And, with a shot through the buck’s lungs, the 18-year-old became the first hunter to fill a pronghorn tag on the Colville Reservation.
He drew the only tag the Colville Confederated Tribes offered this year, the first season the tribes opened for pronghorn. Though it’s just one tag, the hunt is a major milestone for tribal efforts to establish a population of the speedy land mammals, also known as antelope.
Richard Whitney, the wildlife division manager for the Colville Tribes, said it shows that pronghorn have been able to succeed on the reservation since they were first released about a decade ago, but he hopes it’s just the start.
The long term goal, he said, is to “have a very robust population that (tribal members) can use as a susbistence species again.”
Pronghorn have reddish-brown coats with a white underbelly, and two black horns on their heads. They’re the fastest mammal in North America, with the ability to approach highway speeds.
They thrive in wide open landscapes made of grasslands and sagebrush steppe – the sort of habitat found east of the Cascades.
Although pronghorn are native to Washington, they were extirpated through a combination of over-hunting and habitat fragmentation by the early 1900s. State wildlife officials tried to reintroduce them a few times between 1930 and 1970, but had no success.
Tribal wildlife managers took the lead in the past couple decades. The Yakama Nation released 99 pronghorn in 2011 and another 99 in 2018 and 2019. The most recent survey conducted by the Yakama Nation and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife counted 337 pronghorn in that population. Neither WDFW or the Yakama Nation allow hunting for the species.
The Colville Tribes began looking at introducing pronghorn more than two decades ago, Whitney said. He has worked his entire career with the tribal wildlife program, and participated in some of the early studies as a biologist.
Habitat studies showed that there was food, water and cover, and plenty of open space. Setting up a relocation of the animals from one state to another, though, proved challenging. Plans didn’t work out until he became the tribal wildlife manager. In 2015 and 2016, the tribes got a total of 150 pronghorn from Nevada and released them on the reservation.
Radio collars showed biologists where the animals went. They learned quickly that pronghorn don’t like fences – instead of jumping over a fence, they go under it, and if they can’t do that they’re kind of stuck. Whitney said early collar data showed pronghorn bouncing between fencelines, unable to get through.
When they can move, though, they’ll really move. One group crossed the Columbia River, and there’s now a herd of 125 or 150 south of the reservation, Whitney said. A much smaller group went all the way to Ritzville.
Most importantly, the animals have shown they can thrive in Washington. Despite droughts and wildfires, the population has continued to trend upward.
Whitney estimates there are between 250 and 275 pronghorn on the reservation now.
“They’ve been slowly growing,” he said.
With growth rates and other indicators looking good, Whitney proposed offering a single hunting tag this season. Seasons are set in threes, so that will be the plan for the next two seasons at least. After that, they’ll reassess.
Erik Dippold, secretary of the North American Pronghorn Foundation, said the work by the Colville Tribes and the Yakama Nation show what’s possible with pronghorn conservation, and that the species can survive and become a viable part of the landscape in Washington.
Having a hunt take place, Dippold said, is “about as beautiful an example of what the point of conservation is that I can come up with.”
Boyd grew up on the Colville Reservation. He started hunting when he was a kid, and loves chasing elk in September and whitetails during the rut. He’d seen pronghorn around before but didn’t know about the tag drawing until a friend mentioned it to him.
He’d been applying for special hunt drawings for years, so he added it to the list and didn’t think much of it.
It was just his year, drawing wise. His name was pulled for three tags: archery moose, archery mule deer and pronghorn.
Pronghorn season started Sept. 1. The night Boyd notched his tag was the third time he’d been out. It was just going to be a scouting trip at first, at least until he saw the buck.
It was smaller than he’d expected when he walked up to it, but it was still a nice buck. He and his friends gutted it and carried it out of the field.
The head went to a taxidermist, the meat to the freeer. He’s eaten some of it since and said it’s “pretty alright,” but that he still prefers deer.
It was a fun hunt, he said. When the buck went down, he didn’t know what to think.
“It didn’t really feel real at the time,” Boyd said.