18 BULLETIN 1346, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



The difficulties which have attended the establishment of a band 

 of antelope on the Wichita fenced game preserve are detailed else- 

 where in this bulletin. 



With the reintroduction of antelope on the Bison Range from the 

 Nevada fawns, the placing of a small band on the Niobrara Reserva- 

 tion, and the additions to the band still existing on the Wind Cave 

 Refuge by the Biological Survey, and those on the Wichita Game 

 Refuge by the Forest Service, and in the Grand Canyon and in 

 the Yellowstone National Parks by the National Park Service, the 

 Federal Government is now attempting to build up herds of prong- 

 horns in six widely scattered localities within the limits of their 

 former range. 



METHODS OF CAPTURING AND TRANSPLANTING ANTELOPE 



The following statement by E. R. Sans, supervisor of predatory- 

 animal-control work of the Biological Survey in Nevada, who suc- 

 cessfully directed the capture and rearing of the 40 young ante- 

 lope in northwestern Nevada during the spring of 1924, contains so 

 interesting and straightforward an account of the methods followed 

 that it should enable anyone to repeat the operations successfully 

 wherever any considerable number of antelope occur : 



In the northern part of Washoe County, where we captured the young 

 antelope fawns, I estimate that there were from 1,000 to 2,000 antelope 

 ranging during the year except in the winter months. During the fall of 1923 

 they began leaving this range the latter part of November and began returning 

 the first of March, 1924. During December, January, and February they 

 ranged in the High Rock Canyon country, about 40 or 50 miles south of their 

 summer range. 



In a letter received early in May, 1925, Mr. Sans sums up his latest impres- 

 sions concerning the antelope of this section as follows : The bunch at Last 

 Chance, where we took the fawns last year, generally leave the plateau coun- 

 try about the last of November and work both ways, north and south, part of 

 them going clown into Cuano Valley along the Oregon border and, I believe, 

 crossing into Oregon, and the others south down the High Rock close to the 

 Black Rock Desert. The large bunch that ranges during the summer east of 

 Guano Valley, in the high plateau country drift the same way, some going into 

 Guano Valley and others into Virgin Valley and down toward the Black Rock 

 Desert. 



On April 18, 1924, I visited the summer range, and while riding on horseback 

 over one of our predatory-animal trap lines I saw antelope everywhere I looked 

 in bunches of 3 to 9. The does were becoming heavy with fawns, and I 

 looked for them to start dropping them about the first of May. In order to 

 be ready when the first fawns were dropped, I selected three men to start 

 working on May 1. They were to establish camp at the Last Chance Ranch, 

 owned by the Hapgood brothers, located at the head of the antelope range. 

 O. C. Wood, Leo Weilmunster, and True Hapgood, one of the owners of the 

 ranch, made up our crew. They were to ride the range each day, watching 

 the female antelope to learn when the first young were dropped. They were 

 beginning to become discouraged when, on May- 17, they discovered the first 

 new-born fawn. On May 19 I arrived at the Hapgood Ranch accompanied 



