Sunday, May 10, 2020

Places I have physically seen Pronghorn Antelope

They hang out a lot in places like the Painted Desert in Arizona and Yellowstone National Park. I have never seen a pronghorn in California by the way over the years. But, if you want to see deer or bear you can always go to Yosemite National park especially in the valley and trails.

So, seeing Pronghorns in Death Valley would be quite a site. You mostly don't want to go to Death Valley (if you are out in the open) after about May that much camping. Because it is just too hot. Death Valley today for example is 106 right now at 1:34 PM PDT but will be 108 degrees Fahrenheit soon. So, unless you are in an air conditioned vehicle or air conditioned hotel room you mostly don't want to be there from now until maybe September or October. It gets sometimes 120 degrees or up to 128 degrees there during the summers. So, dying in these kinds of temperatures is definitely possible.

I spent 24 hours without air conditioning in 120 degrees at Gila Bend Arizona and only was okay because I was only 25 at the time doing mining essaying work then with my father and a backhoe operator during this time. But, when I thought I was going to pass out during the day I wet my T-Shirt at water that smelled like sulphur at a windmill put there for the animals mostly or to keep people from dying of thirst out there. And I got on my 1974 Honda 250 XL that I had there then. We slept in the back of my father's pickup truck and I rode the bike with a wet t-shirt down the dry washes to keep from passing out from the heat. The coldest it got during the 24 hours there was 100 degrees at 6 am. This would have been 1975 likely during the early summer there because I was married then and my son would have been about a year old and luckily he and my wife weren't there suffering with us. But, it was very beautiful there in the desert 50 to 100 miles from the nearest human being. And at night you could see the whole milky way galaxy  because there were no lights of a city for at least 100 miles or more in any direction.

I remember seeing a bear walk by my tent around 1985 with my kids there camping in Yosemite Valley that had just ripped in two a camper on the back of a truck. I waited at night until the shadow of the bear passed my tent and made sure my family was safe before I headed over to where people were screaming and crying and beating on pans and stuff. Bears don't like loud noises because they like the quiet and have good hearing like Dogs do. In fact Native Americans often called Bears "Big Dogs" because this is their basic behavior to be much like a dog only bears in California might be 400 to 1000 pounds so you don't ever want to piss one off or you might have problems. But, remember these are black bears which are smaller than Grizzly bears which are very territorial. Most people are killed by Grizzly bears which will track you down and kill you if you are in their hunting territory, especially males. But, black bears are primarily defensive of their cubs and their persons and not so much their feeding territory. So, they are less of a threat than Grizzlies can be. Grizzlies used to live in California which is why one is on the state flag but now they all live in places like Yellowstone National Park or Glacier National Park or in Canada or Alaska now. They were hunted out of California, Oregon and Washington by 1930 or so because people didn't want their friends and relatives killed by them like was what was happening sometimes.

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