Rich Guenzel’s pet peeve could be the fault of Spanish conquistadors.
As he sees it, when Spanish explorers came to the West centuries ago, they encountered speedy, tan-and-white critters, the likes of which they’d never seen.
“The nearest comparison they had, and that was just gross morphology, were animals from Africa and Asia, called antelope,” Guenzel told Cowboy State Daily.
So, the Spaniards started calling those new-to-them animals “antelope,” and it stuck.
To this day, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department lists them as “antelope” in the agency's official hunting regulations and on hunting tags.
That's despite the agency’s biologists consistently referring to them, properly, as pronghorn, said Guenzel, who worked for Game and Fish from 1986-2011.
Guenzel, who retired as the agency’s Laramie District wildlife biologist, is passionate about them being called by the right name.
So much so he's come up with a “pronghorn swear jar.”
Anytime someone calls pronghorn “antelope” in his presence, they're asked to put a dollar in the jar – with the money going toward pronghorn conservation.
A Legislative Matter?
Guenzel said that the pronghorn swear jar is mostly a humorous approach to education. He hasn’t actually collected any money yet.
Moreover, Game and Fish can’t be blamed for calling them antelope on paper. It’s written into Wyoming wildlife regulation statutes.
To the best of his knowledge, the term “antelope” was written into the pertinent Wyoming statute in the early 1970s.
And that probably happened because at the time, the “popular usage” of the term prevailed, Guenzel said.
Game and Fish has no authority to change the wording of statutes, he said. Only the Legislature can do that.
Guenzel and Steve Martin of Rock Springs, the Wyoming director of the North American Pronghorn Association, said they’d like to see that happen. Possibly as soon as the Legislature’s 2027 session.
“We’re looking to see if there are any legislators willing to sponsor a bill to get the language in the statute change to “pronghorn,” Martin told Cowboy State Daily.
‘I Didn’t Know’
Martin said he supports Guenzel’s pronghorn swear jar campaign, even if it’s mostly symbolic.
“I agree with him 100%, I would love to officially change the name,” Martin said.
He said he recently went on a tour of a wildlife water-development project with Guenzel and other conservationists and officials.
“On that tour, he basically let everybody know, challenged them all, that if they said ‘antelope’ instead of ‘pronghorn’ they were going to have to put a dollar toward the pronghorn conservation fund,” he said.
Guenzel’s approach was good-natured and light-hearted, but it got the point across, Martin said.
“I correct folks all the time. Even I called them ‘antelope’ for many years because I didn’t know better. But that’s why people do it, the public doesn’t know,” he said.
Distant Cousin Of Giraffes
So, why is it such a big deal to call Wyoming’s iconic speedsters of the badlands pronghorn instead of antelope?
“The point is to educate people about the uniqueness of the animal itself,” Guenzel said.
The term “antelope” isn’t remotely accurate, he added.
Moreover, not only are pronghorn unrelated to actual antelope, they have no direct ties to any living animal, Guenzel said.
At one time multiple pronghorn species roamed North America. All except the species we see today died out tens of thousands of years ago, he said.
That Wyoming has more of the last species of pronghorn than any other state should be a point of great pride, Guenzel said.
“If you’re calling one of our critters an ‘antelope,’ you’re spreading misinformation,” he said.
For many years, pronghorns’ possible genetic ties to any other living species baffled scientists, he said.
Genetic testing was a “game-changer” for species research, he said.
And testing has revealed pronghorn have a distant relationship with giraffes, Guenzel said. Meaning at some point, giraffes and pronghorn must have had a common ancestor.
That tracks because “not all giraffes (past species of giraffes) had long necks,” he said.
Guenzel said if nothing else the pronghorn swear jar and his other efforts will remind Wyoming hunters of the uniqueness of the animals they’re pursuing.
“If you draw a tag and harvest one of these animals, the ‘antelope hunting tag’ allowed you to do that legally. But the animal you’re taking home and sticking in your freezer is a pronghorn,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
