{"id":153554,"date":"2024-02-15T06:05:27","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T13:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=153554"},"modified":"2024-02-15T07:13:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T14:13:24","slug":"fighting-pronghorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/15\/fighting-pronghorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Pronghorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

A radio collar on a pronghorn buck that might<\/span> be too loose?<\/p>\n

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any pronghorn on Antelope Island but three days ago I spent some quality time up close with a herd of 22 of them.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

These two bucks spent almost three minutes jousting with each other. I got hundreds of photos of them sparring but as I mentioned in a recent post, I was having troubles with soft shots that morning (related to atmospherics I hope, instead of problems with my photo gear) so most of my pronghorn photos were soft. These two are some of the sharpest I got.<\/p>\n

I don’t think it was a serious fight. To me it seemed more like play-fighting.<\/p>\n

Yes, the buck on the right is wearing a radio collar and an orange ear tag. In this shot about all we can see clearly is the antenna of the radio collar sticking out sideways beneath his neck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They were circling each other as they tussled so the buck with the jewelry is now on our left.<\/p>\n

Initially I had some concerns about that radio collar. I know absolutely nothing about radio-collared pronghorn, but to me that collar seems far too loose and in some of my (soft) shots the actual collar looks like it could possibly be damaged. I have concerns that it would be easy for that loose collar to become entangled with something else in a variety of ways. Some possibilities – the buck could easily get one of his front legs stuck in the collar, or the horns of another buck could get caught in it while they’re fighting. Lots of unfortunate possibilities come to mind.<\/p>\n

However, when I did a Google image search on “pronghorn with radio collar” it appears that at least some collars on pronghorn are almost<\/span> this loose. Maybe they’re loose by design, so the collar can fit over the thicker lower part of their neck when their head is raised. I just don’t know.<\/p>\n

So I’m throwing this out there in case someone sees this who’s more knowledgeable about radio collars on pronghorn than I am. Once again, my curiosity itch is begging to be scratched.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS – On that same morning I saw something else that I hadn’t seen on the island in a very long time.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Chukars.<\/em><\/p>\n

I can’t remember the last time I saw chukars on the island but it’s been far too long. These three were strongly side lit and they were quite wary of me but I was still delighted to see them and hear the one on the right calling. It gives me hope of getting better Chukar photos in the near future. And hopes that Chukars on the island are on the rebound.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A radio collar on a pronghorn buck that might be too loose? (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,352,8,394,373],"tags":[31,507,82,7346,140,7345,7344,258,311],"class_list":["post-153554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-chukars","category-ecology-and-environment","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-pronghorns","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-buck","tag-chukar","tag-ear-tag","tag-fighting","tag-loose-radio-collar","tag-play-fighting","tag-pronghorn","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/pronghorn-5997-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-DWG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153554"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153592,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153554\/revisions\/153592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}