At dawn on the second day of my three-day June photography workshop in Custer State Park with Les Voorhis of Royal Tine Images, Les said, "So what do you want to see today?" as if wanting could make it so. Unbelievably, I was over-saturated with pictures of buffalo-we had seen and photographed hundreds the day before. My fellow student was on a prairie dog mission, but they had been very elusive.

I answered, "An antelope fawn. You just don't see very many antelope fawns. I think they keep them fairly hidden. I'd like one in good light-with wild flowers." We had a little laugh as if around the next turn we'd find the fawn, but it didn't work quite that quickly. We did find a resting doe in beautiful dawn sunshine. She lay unconcerned as I shot pictures from the back seat, not even bothering with a tripod. What a profile! I guess I've always been caught up in the coloring, or maybe antelope always look straight at me, but even now as I look at the picture I took, I'm a little amazed. Les explained that pronghorns (I'm from the old school that says buffaloes roam and antelope play.) are more related to goats than to deer.

Not much farther up the road, as the day brightened and the sun rose higher, we came upon a pair of does walking along the crest of the hill and a trio of resting bucks in a meadow. The bucks were of apparently different ages, so maybe they weren't yet competitors, or maybe the younger guys just knew their place.

That wasn't the case in the next group we saw. We saw a doe with twin fawns way up on the hill, too far for a good picture, but we pulled over anyway. We had climbed out of the Jeep and were getting ready to set up when a young buck, pursued by a large buck going flat out, shot from a little gully into the open. It wasn't just a case of the "picture we didn't get." We didn't even try. They tore across the flat, up another little hill, down into a gully, across the road and behind us across a meadow and over a hill while all we could do was watch and wish for video! I later learned from the National Wildlife Foundation website (http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/americanpronghorn/) that the antelope can reach speeds of over 60 miles per hour. I believe it. The mama and babies strolled off in the distance.

We piled back into the Jeep and made one more attempt at a prairie dog close up. They were still pretty uncooperative, so Les and Cathy set up to take a few pictures of a couple of antelope bucks grazing across the road. The sun was getting higher, and a breeze was blowing my hair into my face, so I put on the sun hat my sister-in-law bought for me on sale. It's blue. There's a reason it was on sale. It's... well... it attracts attention. The biggest buck's head went up, and he did an actual double take. The younger buck stopped grazing. They stared bug-eyed at my hat. I laughed, and Les and Cathy either got great pictures or missed the whole thing, because they turned and laughed at my hat, too. The website I mentioned before says that pronghorn eyesight is equivalent to 8-power binoculars. Those antelope got a great view of my floppy blue hat!

Back in the Jeep, Les drove us down the road. Around the bend in a sunny meadow we found them: a doe and her fawn in tall lush grass dotted with blooming flax. Although it's common for older does to have twins, there was only one fawn here, and although I certainly can't say the mother was young and inexperienced or that the fawn was a rowdy little boy, she certainly didn't keep the little guy in tow very well. He frolicked a little, checked in with her, and then wandered off onto the road until he was out of our field of vision around a corner. She grazed a little, watched a little, grazed, grunted, then sighed visibly, and started off to get him. Only then did he return, lolloping across the grass on legs that looked too long and spindly to be so efficient. Rejoined, the pair trotted off down the highway-on the left side. We watched and chuckled.

"So Les," I said as we loaded up and got back in the Jeep. "Tomorrow I'd like to see an upland sandpiper on an attractive fence post in great light. Okay?"

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