The Down Horn: Wrong Horn Pronghorn | Colorado Antelope Hunting

Story By: Ivy Eisenhard

It was the opening morning of rifle season for pronghorn in Colorado, and our group had two buck tags to fill! The plan was to go after Ben’s buck first. This was my first-ever time tagging along on a big-game hunt and Ben’s first-ever antelope hunt. We met up at a gas station and got snacks for the long day of hunting ahead.

When we arrived, we saw two other hunters in the fields that we thought we had the sole right to hunt. This was very discouraging since we were on private land and there was not a ton of land to hunt. Then we decided to go through a field of cows into a pasture where, on the horizon, we saw a buck that was worth shooting. He was standing alone on top of a hill, not realizing we were watching him. This was about to get exciting!

Ben stood the tripod on the ground, picked up the gun, and balanced the gun on top of the tripod. His dad whispered instructions to him, but he shot right when his dad was mid-sentence! The buck ran a little bit and then stumbled to the ground where we could see him. While everyone screamed and shouted in celebration, we walked up to the animal and checked to make sure the buck was dead. Ben had shot a great buck on his first try—and at the age of fourteen!

Now it was on to my dad’s hunt. His hunting unit was a couple of hours away, so we drove and relived Ben’s hunt over and over! As soon as we got done with lunch, we were ready for action. We scouted the area and saw two bucks lazily grazing in a pasture, but they were not big enough in my dad’s opinion. By then, the wind was blowing at such an amazing speed that it could push you through the air like you were flying. With such a fantastic windspeed, it would have been impossible for anyone to get a shot. After covering many miles of road, we saw six bucks about two hundred and fifty yards away, but when we looked closer, none of them were shooters.

We could see another group off in the distance, and when we went to turn the truck around to get a closer look, two bucks walked out of a field of standing corn. Putting binoculars on top of them from about 600 yards away, my dad couldn’t believe what he was seeing! He’s been hunting antelope for over twenty years but had never seen a pronghorn that looked like this!

With no hesitation, we stalked the bucks from the standing corn field they had just walked out of, which also worked as a great wind break. Apparently, from my dad’s point of view, the stalking took two hours. I thought it was more like thirty minutes. Finally, we got to about 250 yards away and tried to make a shot. The trouble was that the wrong horn pronghorn was behind the normal-looking buck. Two minutes later, the wrong horn took four steps forward and stood perfectly broadside. “This is our time to shine,” I thought as the whole property shook and the wrong horn dropped to the ground.

We all did a round of high fives, not realizing that we may have shot the longest pronghorn in Colorado. The left side ended up measuring 19.25” long, and the right side was 19” long! The toenails were also super weird. The ends of the toes were stretched out a few extra inches compared to normal toes. He was in very desperate need of nail clippers! As for the name, my dad was calling it the “down horn” pronghorn, and I called it the “wrong horn” pronghorn, so now we call it the down horn wrong horn pronghorn!

During this great experience, I learned that, when things get hard, you should never give up. You never know when a down horn wrong horn pronghorn is going to walk right out of a standing corn field and surprise you!