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blizzard warnings - 13:52 , 03 October 2013

heelerless - 21:32 , 18 August 2013

Red Coat Inn in Fort McLeod - 11:38 , 23 June 2013

rushing into the waters - 09:53 , 21 June 2013

choosing a spot - 17:43 , 27 April 2013

26 July 2008 - 18:34

and then there were six

We arrived before the sun's rays had touched the bottom of the pit. As feared, the pronghorn had not gotten out. And the doe faring so poorly yesterday is now dead.

So now there are seven.\

But the alfalfa I dropped in yesterday has helped. The survivors are all up and about and alert. The fawn even found some milk from its mother.

I make the call.

Four hours later finds us driving up to those sandstone formations again, with two other trucks following behind.

It is time for Plan C.

It has been hard explaining our situation to people who have never been to this site. The first warden expected to be able to drive to the edge of this "pit", unload her 14' livestock ramp down into the hole, and then come back the next day to take the ramp home, pronghorn safely rescued.

Until she saw the place. And learned I knew what I was talking about when I explained you cannot drive to the pit. Not even with a 4-wheeler. And that heavy 14' metal ramp had to be carried by hand over, around, and between eroded rock formations.

Just like each of the 30 bales of hay. Which did not work, either (but were my idea, so we both failed once).

When I first explained our situation to our vet, he asked "Why don't you just take a backhoe out there, dig a trench in the side, and let them out?"

Ummm, because it's solid rock?

When I wondered aloud if we would have enough people to carry the pronghorn out after he had darted them, his response was "Well, if so, we'll just pull a truck up and use a winch."

Ummmm, no. We won't be able to use any trucks.

So Plan C is to tranquilize the pronghorn, and haul them out of the pit of death. The problem is the water covering half the pit. The drugs will take several minutes to take effect, and if they fall, jump or stumble into the half of the pit that is under water when that happens, they will drown. Even if it's only a few inches deep.

His assessment when I first explained our problem and the water: "We'll lose a few."

Not that we "could", but that we "would".

Which is why this was Plan C, not A or B.

We park at the edge of the rocks and I point out the highest rocky ridge. Their pit is just at the base of that ridge.

"On the other side?"

No, this side.

He looks down into the wide valley of rock knobs, seeing no hole that could even hide a jackrabbit, and looks at me as if I'd been sampling one of the vials in his kit. But disbelief aside, begins loading his darts.

He's using a relatively new tranquilizer. Highly effective on pronghorn, and comparatively safe. Meaning you don't have to have the dose figured exactly right to prevent killing the animal. Not necessarily true of all tranquilizers. And where some drugs can become lethal if the animal is panicked, alarmed or stressed, with this stuff you usually just have to use more drug.

And it is also nowhere near as lethal to humans as carfentanil.

As we walk up to the pit and he gets his first peek into the chasm in the rock, I hear "Well I'll be damned."

And quickly, before the pronghorn can get too upset, the process begins. We've already decided the fawn will not be tranquilized. He's small enough to just grab and carry, and his hide and hips are probably too thin to stop a dart from doing real damage.

As the vet prepares to begin

("Like shooting fish in a barrel", he said.)

we watch to make sure each pronghorn is hit, and hit only once. The two mature bucks are easy to tell apart; one's horns are tall and thin, the older buck's are heavy with a deep prong. Of the two surviving does, one is sleek while the other, the mother of the fawn, has an obvious shed line along her side.

The two yearling bucks are hardest to distinguish. But one has a white spot on his butt (a scent gland), and he is the first one darted.

Within a minute, he is unsteady on his legs.

And two minutes later he is down. Fortunately not in the water. And our vet has already darted several others.

Well practiced, his aim is true and soon all but one adult pronghorn has a bright lemon-lime dart in their butt.

Things are going well. Until one of the larger bucks does a backflip into the water.

Craaaap!

And quickly down the hay bales three of us go. The buck is convulsing, with only one horn and a hip sticking out of the water when I grab the horn and pull his head up.

The water I thought may be as much as three feet deep is up to my armpits.

As I wrestle the buck, I hear the thwipp! of the last dart. All is bedlam in the pit now, with pronghorn bouncing every which way, and launching themselves into the water. As I start pushing the buck towards shore, I look back and see another pronghorn sinking against the wall in the deepest point. And turn back, being careful to keep the struggling buck's muzzle pointed towards the sky.

Reaching down into the murky water, I pull the head of the sinking doe up and, one pronghorn under each arm, head for shore.

The other doe doesn't go down, and receives a second dart in her butt. The fawn is quickly snagged and carried out of the pit, and all of a sudden, all is quiet in the pit.

Until the first yearling buck, in a kneejerk reaction common to this drug, flips himself like a Mexican jumping bean into the water.

And in I go again.

The doe I pulled out is not breathing, so I perform artificial respiration on her until a canvas bag is brought down. She is the first to go up.

And, one by one, the mature bucks first, each of the remaining five pronghorn is carried up the bales and given a shot to counteract the tranquilizer. I come up with the last animal, one of the yearling bucks, and notice a doe carcass off to the side.

We lost one.

The yearling receives his antagonist shot

and within a minute is on his feet.

At two minutes he is alert, and throws us a curious glance

before bounding down the draw after the others.

The vet is thrilled. Seven pronghorn darted, rescued and released in under 18 minutes.

With only one mortality. Much better than he expected.

I check the doe's carcass, dreading what I might find.

Yep.

The one with a shed line.

Of all the pronghorn to lose, why did it have to be that one?

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