Hunting the Crown Prince of the Plains

WHEN I DREW THE BUCK PRONGHORN TAG FOR the hunt last fall during the annual New Mexico Game and Fish Department public lottery, I knew my opportunities would be limited to state land since most of the terrain in Unit 41 is private. It was one of 30 tags for the unit, which runs from roughly San Jon to Logan along the Texas border.

Each year, Game and Fish pays the New Mexico State Land Office $800,000 and performs $200,000 worth of habitat work for the exclusive hunting lease on approximately nine million surface acres across the state. This is paid for using hunting license dollars. Without this lease agreement between state agencies, most of the land in Unit 41 would be inaccessible.

I’ve made a three-day plan to come here, near Bueyeros, from my home in Santa Fe to connect to place, to deepen my relationship to the land I call home through the animals I hunt and their habitats. I learn about adaptation through them and, in turn, connect to others by sharing the food I hunt. I do not hunt merely to kill or to accumulate animals like trophies on a wall. Since I’ve been hunting in the eight ecoregions of New Mexico over the past 15 years, I am less likely now to take a shot at any animal. 

Through hunting, I aim to develop sacred, intimate relationships with animals, places, people—and myself. 

Before my hunt begins, I visit with Jack and Tuda Libby Crews, friends whose renovated former rectory in Mosquero serves as my accommodation. Tuda’s relationship with the land, passed down through generations in her family, is akin to my own farming and ranching heritage and sensibility. The Crews family’s Ute Creek Cattle Company (UCCC) is in the throes of succession, which includes a dispersion of the high-quality herd of Angus cows they’ve developed over the last 23 years. Tuda has tested numerous water, soil, and grassland techniques to foster regeneration rather than allowing her cattle to hammer the ground grassless. “Time-managed, rotational livestock grazing is the tool we use,” she explains.

Her family’s stewardship, which includes cattle and wild foragers like elk, deer, and pronghorn, encourages diversity in bird and wildlife habitat. In 2018, UCCC engaged Bull Dog Mesa Outdoors in a hunting lease agreement to guide private hunts on their land, which creates another revenue stream for the ranch. “Elk are large animals with prolific reproduction rates,” Tuda says. “The hunting lease helps manage numbers.” 

Likewise, Game and Fish implements varied wildlife management strategies according to ecological conditions, rangeland health, wildlife populations, and hunting demand. In early 2025, a State Game Commission presentation showed that pronghorn density and herd sizes had decreased, likely due to fawn mortality. Drought was cited as the likely cause of the low survival rate. In the case of the pronghorn in the northeast part of the state, the department determined in January that the conditions are dire enough to warrant the drastic and immediate reduction of hunting licenses for mature buck pronghorn by 20 percent. 

But, of course, I didn’t know any of that last fall, when I met the Crown Prince on those plains.

A few hours after I lock eyes with the Prince, I’m wondering if he is dead or alive. “I wouldn’t have flagged you down, except that I took a shot at a buck a few sections south of here on state land,” I tell the rancher sitting in his truck, who I’ll call Mr. H. “I think I missed, but I followed him to be sure.”

Before meeting up with Mr. H, I’d followed the buck on foot for several hours, glassing to see if he was injured and if I could get closer to try again. I don’t want to leave a wounded animal out there, but from what I’ve seen from the onX app I use, the road’s parcels are all privately owned. “I can’t access him from any direction,” I explain.

We sure don’t want an injured animal out there,” Mr. H says. “This here is mine. You can go on me to get at them,” he offers. “On me” is how ranchers refer to the land that’s theirs—as if the land is them, inseparable. “If you have a shot, take it.” 

He tells me that although he grew up hunting, he hasn’t done so in a long time. “I want to leave them alone, the ones with the trophy horns. They’ve grown that old. Why take them? I don’t want to be a part of that anymore.” He tells me about his problems with hunters trespassing on his land, taking haphazard shots, and endangering his cattle. His voice trails off as he gazes east, not looking me in the eye. It’s a reminder of my status as a visitor, an outsider. 

He’s in his truck; I’m in mine. We’re distanced, armored, safe—looking away in the face of potential conflict. How do we respond when what matters to us most is threatened? These questions percolate internally. I wonder if what connects us—what we have in common—can be stronger, more binding. 

“I hear you,” I nod. “It feels like so much taking. Killing to kill. Leaving trash, beer bottles, empty shotgun shells and rifle cartridges—poaching.” I feel awful for being here, now that he’s shared his experiences. “Hunters trespassing, endangering your cattle. I don’t want to be one of them,” I say, looking down at the caliche road. 

He says he’s seen quail carcasses in his stock tanks. “Those guys will blast at the covey, shoot ’em up, take what they want of the birds and toss the dead in my stock tanks. It’s just sickening,” Mr. H goes on, listing the hunters’ blatant violations.

“Well, I don’t have to go in there, I can just be on my way,” I say. As if this concession, this letting go of an opportunity at the antelope I came for, would make up for my own mistakes as a hunter—and maybe the mistakes of others. 

Couldn’t I right the many wrongs?

AS I PREPARED FOR THE FIRST DAY OF THE HUNT, I pulled onto a two-track accessing state land. Not half a mile in, I spotted a nice herd of pronghorn with at least one buck. Shifting into park, I lowered the window, raised my binoculars, and watched the relaxed group, tugging tufts of grama grass and stepping between fleshy opuntia pads. Occasionally, one looked up, scanned the perimeter, and grazed on.

Pronghorn are indigenous to western North America’s prairie ecosystems, dependent on open range to graze. Although they are also known as antelope, are nicknamed “speed goats,” and may look like kin to bighorn sheep or domestic goats, the pronghorn’s closest relatives are the giraffe and okapi, an African mammal that resembles a cross between a giraffe and zebra. They’re best known for speed, second only to the cheetah, and may reach up to 55 miles per hour at full acceleration. Their eyes, situated high and wide on their skulls, detect predators like coyotes and cougars from as far away as four miles. Fences are one of pronghorns’ greatest threats, since they do not jump. After much resistance and seeming defeat by barbed-wire obstacles, antelope may eventually crawl through or under them.

This is where I’ll be come first light tomorrow, I thought, pleased by the surprise encounter with the herd—especially after the locals I had spoken with said the pronghorn had been scarce lately. 

I watched, taking in the shape of their dainty bodies. The pronghorn’s white bellies; fine, arched ankles; wide eyes; and sleek skins made them hoofed dancers in a desert of extremes. Would they spin and twirl, hold still, or bolt, pushing the earth away, a dizzy dust erasing their trace.

The next morning before sunrise, a meadowlark perched on mesquite. Her song, like oily marbles rolling in her throat, peeled open the day. I’d headed southeast out of Mosquero, descending switchbacks where I could eke out shadows of geologic deposits. These stacked stone strata—ochre, Colorado red, chalky gray, cached flora and fauna fossils—represent a push-pull of water and land in millennial cycles of accumulation and erosion. 

The landscape of New Mexico, an audacious seductress of extremes, dares and invites. On this hunt, her bounty of native grasses, colorful perennials, cacti and shrubs, and animal kin like desert tortoise, rattlesnake, Merriam’s turkey, red-tailed hawk, and mule deer remind me that I am only one of many species who make a home here.

Arriving where I’d scouted the day before, I killed the engine, turned the headlights off, stepped out, and listened. The morning rested, sleepy, dim. I moved to the edge of the dirt road, lowered to my knees and elbows, lifted my palms to the sky, resting my forehead to the ground, and whispered, “Thank you,” situating myself as a visitor. What will the animals show me? I wondered.

For four hours, I made a maze of tracks, stalking the herd, stopping and glassing, crawling on my knees to get closer. Each advance that minimized the distance between us became futile as they drifted east, an invisible thread tugging their muzzles to the expanse of sweeter grass on the other side.

At midday, I headed east in the pickup to the far boundary of the section, where I thought the pronghorn might be bedded down until the heat passed. Instead, they were on the run. Peering through binoculars, I spotted them. Like Ping-Pong balls slammed back and forth across a table, the herd raced from one fence line to another, amped and frantic from multiple hunters pressing in. At least three pickups were stationed strategically, ready to pounce from all edges.

Given the competition and the agitated antelope, I decided to head for gas in Clayton, munching a lunch of sliced elk roast, chunks of cheddar, apples, almonds, and celery sticks.
I had gulped down nearly three quarts of water, and it was only noon.

When I returned to my original site after gassing up, other hunters were parked where I had been. 

“Look here, see these pictures from last year in Africa. We got an elephant!” a man cloaked in camo grinned as he stood by my parked pickup. The middle-aged man from Missouri told me he was on standby, waiting for his girlfriend and their sidekick, who was filming everything, to get set up on a pronghorn. 

My belly sank. I wondered if they were on the same buck I had spotted the evening before.

“My girlfriend wanted to give it a try, so I got her the gear, and she started practicing her shot,” he said, proud of his new recruit. “Yeah, the herd is bedded down, the buck is resting,” he reported. “He’s at just over 700 yards. She had missed two others at closer ranges earlier.”

“Seven hundred yards? Geez, that’s far,” I replied. I’m not confident taking a shot from more than 200 or 300 yards. “What’s she shooting with?”

He rattled out every detail of the 6.5 Creedmoor rifle, ammunition type,  weight, scope power, and bipod rest. “Yep, she can just dial the distance in and, WHAM!” He paused, lifted his binoculars. “She’s getting ready, looks like maybe the buck stood up.” 

I squinted and made out the blonde ponytail bouncing from the back of her camo hat. She raised her cellphone and snapped a selfie. The camera guy captured every move. 

I wondered where the scene would be posted, how many thumbs-ups and hearts it would get. What would be shared of the animal and his home?

A mess of emotions churned inside as I said goodbye and drove away. Traveling to faraway places for trophy hunts, taking animals for show. Is my way, hunting for food close to home, better? Or am I, too, as Mr. H seethingly describes a couple of days later, one of “those hunters”? 

“HE’S ON TO ME,” I THINK TO MYSELF on the third day as the Crown Prince stares me down. The pickup jiggles over the cattle guard onto state land. I decide to drive to the other side and circle back on foot so I don’t spook him. 

Past a forlorn windmill and dry stock tank, I scan the horizon for the buck. I drop down, inhale, and prepare to drag myself across the crispy pasture. As I practice my push-pull, elbow-knee moves, the land beneath me expands; the spot where the buck stood now appears farther away, at about 200 yards.

Sitting up, a sand bur pokes through my sock, pricks my ankle. Just as I lift the binoculars, I hear a sweet, soft squeal to the south, “Eeew, eeew … eeew, eeew.” Trying to identify the source, my mind conjures cow and calf elk, calling to each other casually. But this sounds different. 

In slow motion, I twist my head to the left to see a wispy pronghorn doe float toward the Crown Prince, one slippered weightless foot, then another, her head bowing and lifting with each coy call. Her stunted, thick horns curl slightly, a tiny tiara compared to his crown. Like a new couple in choreographed courtship, the two tiptoe toward each other. The bright white caliche road bends toward the pale curve of their bellies. I freeze, anticipating their embrace, as if I, too, am part of the otherworldly encounter, the seduction. 

But I know I’m an outsider. The words of Tuda’s husband, Jack, from just two nights before, surface as I position the Mauser’s crosshairs on the buck: “I used to hunt deer, elk … killed lots of elk. But not anymore. I killed enough.” I think about the man from Missouri and his girlfriend on opening day. I wonder if they will eventually feel they have killed enough?

What, now, will I choose? Is killing for food the best I can do? 

My motion draws their attention. We three stare, a tense tango while time stands still.

CRACK. The bullet blasts as I pull the trigger. THWAP! Contact is made. Did I hit the buck? Or just the ground? My ears ring.

The pronghorn bolt.

Mr. H and I shake hands. “I best get going,” he says. “I’ve got lots to take care of, and I’ve already taken up too much of your time.” It’s a tidy tuck of the many loose ends of our brief conversation.

He gives me specific instructions about how exactly to access his land, up the narrow gravel road leading to the gas well pad. “If I were you, I’d use that well infrastructure to hide behind. Sneak on up in there and get a good look.” 

While I’m standing in the shadow of the bulky extractive armature, the sun finally begins to let up. With about half an hour more for legal shooting, I watch and wait.

They appear. “One, two, three, four … the buck … five, six,” I count the harem of does and the royal buck. Not one detects me. To have any chance, I need to belly-crawl to shorten the 500-yard distance between us. I drag myself to a concave bowl of what must have been a domestic dump. Scraggly weeds, coils of rusty barbed wire, smashed cans, glass shards, and faded labels dot the ground. Obscured in the belly of the basin, I catch my breath, watch, then crawl closer.

The buck, unscathed and alert, is on the adjacent section of private land where I haven’t obtained permission to hunt. Exhaling, I gaze to the west, noting the sun between laden gray clouds. Not long until last light, I think, then let go of the getting.

In sync with my surrender, the last couple of does on this side cross over to the private land I’m forbidden to access. Ownership boundaries, lines on paper, sealed with the legal bindings of dollars and signatures, determine where I can and can’t go. Fences define space here, excluding undesirable trespassers, enclosing valued resources. Seeds and soil, propelled into motion by wind and water, defy these boundaries. The pronghorn, too, drift across the waves of plains.

I watch the Crown Prince as the harem gathers. After the sun exhales and the clouds converge and rumble the tease of deluge, I imagine I see him staring back at me. Does he see me, this awkward two-legger, crouched on his turf? Did he know I was there all along? Or is he only looking past me to the limitless horizon, where he reigns, at home, unbound? 

Curious how New Mexico protects its pronghorns? See how biologists are relocating pronghorn to restore their herds statewide.