Pronghorns for the Poor

Mark Twain once quipped that the only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

If you feel the cruel pinch of want right now, and bridle at bail-out expenditures that boost taxes as they reward the profligate, well, I can't help you. But I'll pass along what my psychiatrist shared the other day as I lay, shaking uncontrollably, on his couch.

"First, you must visit this office often," he purred. "Frequent sessions relieve tax pain."

"By relieving me of taxable income?" I might have been distraught, but I was not out of my mind.

Doc let it pass. "Secondly, you must take a vacation. Go somewhere you wouldn't ordinarily go. Take a rifle. Shoot something."

My ears perked up. "But these days I can't afford hunts in far-away places."

"Ever try pronghorns?"

As a matter of fact, I had. Good fun. High success rates. No outfitter fees. But that was long ago.

Tags for public units had since become much harder to get, and outfitting leases had pretty much locked up private ranches once accessible to anyone willing to knock on a door. And I said so.

"Actually, pronghorn hunting is as good as ever--better in some places. Wyoming may still have as many antelope as people. It issues additional antlerless tags. A few units even permit you two bucks. Get drawn for a public area, and your only other expense is fuel and groceries. While you can book an outfitted hunt on private land, a lot of ranches are still open to unguided hunting for a modest fee. You just show up and pay the rancher. Last time I went, I knocked on a ranch door north of Gillette and paid $50 for a day's access to 10,000 acres of prime antelope country. Saw lots of bucks, no hunters."

My shakes subsided. Doc shuffled from the room. He returned a few minutes later with a stack of big-game pamphlets from western states….

Like many hunters, I've scaled back my travel to assist GM. Still, I'll be hunting pronghorns three times in 2009, if all the stars align. Nowhere in the field can you get more fun for your dollar. Forget about horses and airplanes, and licenses that cost more than your first automobile. While ranch access fees have crept upward, landowners on the best pronghorn range generally welcome hunters. "No sense letting those goats over-populate," one told me last fall. While antelope can stomach sagebrush and other plants of little value to cattle, they can also nibble alfalfa to the ground. And many family ranches are run by people who understand the spending limits of blue-collar sportsmen. "We'd rather get a little money from hunters than subsidize antelope." Besides, he said, tags fill quickly. "Goat hunters don't move in to stay for two weeks."