{"id":169073,"date":"2025-07-11T06:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T12:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=169073"},"modified":"2025-07-11T07:29:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T13:29:24","slug":"indecisive-pronghorn-fawn-triplets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/11\/indecisive-pronghorn-fawn-triplets\/","title":{"rendered":"Indecisive Pronghorn Fawn Triplets"},"content":{"rendered":"

On my recent camping trip to Montana’s Centennial valley, I had a first for me – pronghorn triplets.<\/p>\n

According to Wyoming Game and Fish Department (and several other sources I checked), pronghorn triplets are a “rare” occurrence. Usually, “pronghorn produce single fawns in their first round of reproduction and twins after that. But triplets occur in only about 1 of every 200 pregnancies.”<\/p>\n

All photos below are presented in the order they were taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I found them in late afternoon near Red Rock Lakes NWR’s Lower Red Rock Lake. They were slightly older and a little larger than many of the other pronghorn fawns I’d been seeing.<\/p>\n

At first they were lying down and hidden in the tall grass but my approaching pickup made them a little nervous so they got up and…<\/p>\n

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looked toward mama who was perhaps 200 yards out of frame at upper left. All three erected and flashed their white rump patch in alarm.<\/p>\n

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But collectively they couldn’t decide what to do – run toward mama or lie back down in the grass and hide. It was almost like they took turns lying down, and then getting back up. Here the one in the middle had just lied down, so of course it…<\/p>\n

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flattened its white rump patch so it wasn’t quite so obvious.<\/p>\n

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But then that little guy got back up and…<\/p>\n

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one or both of its siblings lied down. This happened repeatedly but I missed getting some of the photos (and this one isn’t very sharp) because I was distracted by…<\/p>\n

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an adult pronghorn that came racing in from my right. This isn’t mama – she’s still out of frame at upper left. I don’t know what spooked this doe, but she was in a big hurry to get somewhere.<\/p>\n

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Eventually, perhaps on some unseen (by me) signal from mama, all three siblings…<\/p>\n

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layed back down in the grass, with only their heads sticking up. One has its eyes glued on mama and the other two are watching me.<\/p>\n

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After a while they felt safe enough to get up and race toward their mother.<\/p>\n

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And here’s mama, with a small part of Lower Red Rock Lake in the background. While I was there the fawns never did get quite close enough to their mother for me to get all four of them in the frame.<\/p>\n

I wish I’d been able to get better photos to document all this but the afternoon light was harsh and quite a few of my photos were soft because my active focus point kept grabbing onto tall grasses in front of the pronghorn.<\/p>\n

But to see and photograph pronghorn triplets was a special treat.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

On my recent camping trip to Montana’s Centennial valley, I had a first for me – pronghorn triplets. (11 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169082,"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":[334,1493,373,360],"tags":[7854,7770,7855,263,7856],"class_list":["post-169073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-pronghorns","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-how-common-are-pronghorn-triplets","tag-montanas-centennial-valley","tag-pronghorn-flashing-white-rump-patch","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-wyoming-game-and-fish-department"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/pronghorn-7797-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HYZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169073","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=169073"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169114,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169073\/revisions\/169114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}