Pronghorns

Jungle Jim

Well Known Member
Friday 18 March 22.........

Whilst doing some heavy duty creeping style off-roading minus any visable record of previous roads or trails thru deep sand with thousands upon thousands of long deserted Giant Kangaroo Rat colonies, we stopped to pick up the bleached white skull of a jackrabbit. First step out of the Jeep was a mistake as the sands were covered with thousands of the needle sharp seeds pods of the invasive and foreign burr grass. As I was pulling the spines from my flip flops and toes I kept getting a sort of white flashing kinda like someone using a small mirror or even a rifle scope to get my attention.

I scanned the horizon to my right and spotted the brilliant white rear end of an animal slowly moving away yet stopping every so often behind a Creosote Bush to watch us. We got out the glasses and saw what at first I thought could only be a White Tailed Deer. Then thinking this barren "waste land" couldn't possibly support a deer of any kind. It had huge ears, no horns and stood only about four feet tall. After a few seconds it turned tail and flashed that rump again and this time was followed by a smaller animal of the same sort. They were Sonoran Pronghorns! The little kid was not much bigger than the Antelope Jack Rabbit found further south.

The doe kept the little kid close behind yet they never ran off and out of sight. After watching this unbelievable sight we started up and within a few minutes flushed out another doe with her kid close behind. They had the same behavior as the first ones, just walking a few feet then stopping behind a Creosote Bush and just staring at us.

The next mile or so we spotted eight more adults, one of them a single doe that obviously had a kid hidden away somewhere close by and a group of three then another group of four. None of them ever panicked and dashed off, they were clearly as interested in us as we were with them. None of them had horns so identifying them by sex was not possible other than the does with kids. This area could be called a "kidding ground" as the does choose the most barren part of their range in order to keep potential predators in view

All of this was within plain view of the Mayan Palace and the deep blue of the Sea of Cortez.

JJ
 

audsley

Well Known Member
There are Sonoran pronghorn in northwest Sonora and southwestern Arizona. Many are in Organ Pipe and the eastern part of Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge.
 

Jungle Jim

Well Known Member
I have a skull of a Sonoran Pronghorn that we picked up in the dunes on the north side of Sierra Del Rosario west of the Pinnacates and another from the lava flows on the east side of the Pinnacates.

Last spring we saw a road kill doe on I-8 just east of Dateland AZ.

Last spring we made multiple trips throughout the Castle Dome Mountain slopes and eastern Yuma Proving Grounds to try and spot any from the recent repopulation attempts but saw no evidence of a single animal. Last spring we made multiple trips from the border north to I-8 in the Goldwater and Marine Corps gunnery range and saw thousands of fresh tracks and lots of Desert Lilies that had been broused to the ground by them although never saw a live animal.

Two weeks ago we took a trip along Trumps Wall from the Tinajas Altas Mountains east to the Cabeza Prieta Refuge to see the progress. We headed home north from Tule Well through the Goldwater Range and saw the fenced in kidding pen but didn't see a single animal. During all border trips we stopped Border Patrol officers that told us that they see them often and sometimes a dozen or more chase alongside their vehicles.

Judging by the numbers of tracks that we saw last weekend in my post above the population near PP must be in the hundreds of animals.

And yes Zona you are missing something!

JJ
 

Old55

Well Known Member
Good article. Gives a well-balanced picture of the situation.
My buddy who just recovered from a tough covid adventure ( unvaxed gearhead but an awesome person besides that) found one flipped upside down and stuck in a fence while doing an isolated trail build on the Arizona trail near the border .He was able to free it and said later saw a herd…It happened .this week.A huge ranch land owner is replacing all his with no barbs top and bottom….a mammoth job889CB273-ED35-4337-8935-C7D80DC70881.png
 
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Jungle Jim

Well Known Member
We used to camp in a surreal desert canyon on the south side of the Sierra Del Rosarios maybe ten miles south of Mex 2. In the mornings we awoke to an incredible vista of limitless giant dunes unbroken all the way to the blue waters of Adair Bay some thirty miles off in the distance. We camped in the shadow of an enormous granite boulder in the middle of the canyon maybe three stories high with a slick smooth south face marked with thousands of 50 cal. machine gun and 20 mm. cannon hits from WWII US Army close support attack aircraft most likely based at the old airfield at Dateland AZ. The trail of Camino Del Diablo with it's three to four feet deep wagon tracks passes along the whole south face of the mountain range. In the early mornings we would always see dozens of Sonora Pronghorns out on the sandy wildflower blanketed flats while sipping our coffee and warming up next to the glowing coals of an Ironwood campfire. We called our campsite there: "Space Mountain". This was in the early 1990's..........................................

In those days we would pull off Mex 2 at a roadside cafe and truck stop known as El Saguaro. We would follow a trail through the decades of trash, old tires, cervesa bottles and garbage from the cafe and llantera for a mile or so south along the western slopes of the Sierra De Los Alacranes. We would almost always see Desert Bighorns grazing at the base of the granite slopes. Then we would cross a clandestine dirt airfield that the drug smugglers had used unmolested for many years. The aircraft activity there was all at night with the strip marked with coffee cans filled with old motor oil and lit up when a loaded plane was to be expected late at night. From the airstrip we would cross through a dune field impassible to almost any vehicle and finally to the north slopes of the Sierra Del Rosarios.

For many years we would camp out there every spring. I even have an extensive pit-fall trap line out there made from five and ten gallon cans with the tops cut off and burried flush to the ground. Reptiles to include small snakes and lizards would fall in them and never get out on their own. I have many records of animals that I collected there that had never been recorded in that part of Sonora.

One day as we were heading home back to Yuma and crossing the airstrip we were approached by a group of five or six fast moving 4x4 pickups full of drunk locals. We stopped to let them pass and ended up having a conversation related to their guns and the fifteen or so Sonora Pronghorns dead in the beds of the trucks.

They had high quality hunting rifles and told us that they were a "hunting club" from Mexicali BC and were on the way to shoot a few "Borregos" before a few more cervesas at the cantina then heading home.

That my friends was the last time we ever saw the Del Rosarios and Sonora Pronghorns up close............................................................... Until last weekend.

A lot of memories every time we head to PP on the Coastal Highway with that isolated desert mountain range in view to the east.

And by the way Jerry, any Pronghorn can slip under a wire fence at full speed without a scratch.

JJ
 

Old55

Well Known Member
Bad shit is happening that way these days…Since those two giant loads were taken this month the boby count have been piling up….a lot up by you….think its a good time to stay close to homeeE218C9AF-E5BB-46DB-9F5A-38B7F9310B35.jpeg
 
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Jungle Jim

Well Known Member
Too bad...............

That scraggly Creosote Bush would have been well nourished for a few decades. Also, used to be prime Pronghorn country before the Mexicali "hunting club" had their way with them.

Did the article say where exactly this was? By the erector set power lines pumping juice all the way from Puerto Liberdad in the background it looks like the short stretch from Mex 2 to La Casa de Quota on the beginning of the Coastal Highway.

The puffed up blue hazmat suits look pretty cool though, as if La Creatura de Laguna Negro might just pop up from the sands at any moment. More than likely they must use them due to the swarms of diseased shit eating moscas that abound in that area where the most Grande Basulera in Sonora is located.

Opening your truck window to pay for the toll always means swatting flies inside your truck all the way to PP.

We see a lot of suspicious looking "crime" scenes out there on the range between the wall and I-8. Lots of piles of sexy female under garments scattered next to Creosote Bushes with cheap kiddie style backpacks lying next to them. Some with little whore purses still loaded with peso coins, prescription drugs, ID cards and contact phone numbers written in Mexican on little cards.

Oh well,

Just another day in paradise!

JJ
 

Jungle Jim

Well Known Member
Too bad...............

That scraggly Creosote Bush would have been well nourished for a few decades. Also, used to be prime Pronghorn country before the Mexicali "hunting club" had their way with them.

Did the article say where exactly this was? By the erector set power lines pumping juice all the way from Puerto Liberdad in the background it looks like the short stretch from Mex 2 to La Casa de Quota on the beginning of the Coastal Highway.

The puffed up blue hazmat suits look pretty cool though, as if La Creatura de Laguna Negro might just pop up from the sands at any moment. More than likely they must use them due to the swarms of diseased shit eating moscas that abound in that area where the most Grande Basulera in Sonora is located.

Opening your truck window to pay for the toll always means swatting flies inside your truck all the way to PP.

We see a lot of suspicious looking "crime" scenes out there on the range between the wall and I-8. Lots of piles of sexy female under garments scattered next to Creosote Bushes with cheap kiddie style backpacks lying next to them. Some with little whore purses still loaded with peso coins, prescription drugs, ID cards and contact phone numbers written in Mexican on little cards.

Oh well,

Just another day in paradise!

JJ
 

Jungle Jim

Well Known Member
So Jerry..........

What does "Someones daughter" have to do with the body count in the desert near San Luis Sonora?

I deal with many Mexican friends that live in SLRC and come to work here in Yuma every day. The word has been out for a long time and of course not covered in the printed press for obvious reasons.

First, cartel killings/executions are not disposed of in a deep hole in the desert because they want the dead bodies to be found, displayed and serve as a public warning to their competitors and loose lipped rats. They make no attempt to hide the identity of the victims because they want the law, their former associates and families to know who they were. When those bodies are finally found depending on the time period out in the open they will be completely stripped of all flesh by those wiley Coyotes, brutish Badgers and ever-present red headed black buzzards AKA Zopilotes. The bones and clothing will be scattered far and wide withing a few weeks and anything other than "dental records" there will be nothing to lead to their identities

Secondly, it is well known especially since the onset of the scamdemic that there were a lot of dead bodies that needed to be disposed of especially in a big berg such as SLRC Sonora. The hospitals are not responsible for them, have no where to store them and contract them out to local mortuaries to be incinerated as they were not allowed to be buried in the graveyards just as here in the FUSA. So in order to cheap out and save on a shitload of propane they took them out to the desert and dumped them in mass graves that obviously were excavated with the same heavy machinery as in the photo in your article.

JJ
 
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