Care about high-quality wildlife reporting? Sign up for our free newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.

Wyoming’s ungulates know better than to linger too long when a vehicle slows and stops, especially in the fall. Oftentimes, it’s a source of danger: next comes a door opening and a human hunter emerging.

But early on Sept. 24, a small bunch of pronghorn, mostly does and fawns, tested fate for a few moments in view of the Lander Cutoff Road.

They paused from breakfast-hour foraging, which allowed for a few photographs, in the so-called Golden Triangle — a region known for retaining the largest and most unsullied, intact tracts of sagebrush left on Earth. Those plants glistened, looking gold themselves, in the morning light.

Within moments, the herd wisely bounde

See Full Page