“A sweep of western landscape without pods of white pronghorn rumps randomly dotting the panorama is, to me, the essence of emptiness. There seems to be great swings in antelope numbers these days as game departments try to balance the demands of the hunting fraternity with a genuine concern among ranchers for keeping pronghorn populations in check. The job of achieving that balance tests the wisdom of diplomacy of a lot of dedicated wildlife management people. The long-range stake in all of this is the continuing and reassuring presence, on those vast western plains, of little pods of flashing, snowy white pronghorn rumps.”

Each spring and fall, hundreds of pronghorn antelope migrate between their summer habitat in Grand Teton National Park to their winter range in the Green River Valley of southwestern Wyoming via the Path of the Pronghorn—a popular name for the long-distance migration of the Sublette Pronghorn Herd—the first delineated corridor designated by the state of Wyoming. The pronghorns’ 200-mile migration route is the longest land migration in the lower 48 states, and one of the most difficult. Part of one of the most studied ungulate migration routes in North America, the Path of the Pronghorn is so named because it represents a “bottleneck,” an area wedged between areas of rural development and landscape features. Not only must the animals traverse rough terrain, scaling heights and crossing bodies of water, but they also must cross subdivisions, highways, and private ranchland.

Fortunately, these icons of the American West persist in their seasonal migration to delight anyone fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of those white rumps spiriting over the sagebrush plains. This present work exemplifies Kuhn’s mastery of wildlife articulation and composition.