Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game For the sheep lovers out there!

I took a little road trip in Colorado and was fortunate enough to get in on some sheep on top of a bluff. I put the sneak on them and managed a heck of a picture. Five nice rams all together!



This is a cell phone pic of a 7 year old ram above my house. I have never seen rams on this mountain. This ram is less than 10 feet from me. He was really nervous and was stomping his feet. The other two rams of similar size just kept feeding.


It was a good day Flinch

Very nice!! You still living at the same place? Reason I ask is that IIRC DWR eliminated sheep hunts in that unit due to unexplained die offs. Wonder if they just moved...

I'm in the same place. The "die offs" were caused by poaching and EXTREME amounts of cougars. The first week they planted them, 12of the 26 were dead. They found piles of hair with a radio collar in the middle. A couple were found with their heads cut off. We told them they wouldn't last a week with all the cougars, but they didn't listen. That little stunt cost "us" a few hundred grand. They had a cougar hunt in the area the next month. I heard the tally was 26 dead cougars...and those were the ones reported. Flinch

Great shots. The title had me a bit worried though.

No Basquards on Campfire?

The DWR had to 're-learn' that lesson with the re-intro to the Stansbury's a couple of years ago. Lions went through them fast!! They didn't have that problem on a couple of other transplants where they took them out BEFORE putting the sheep there. According to one of their bios, these cats aren't used to eating sheep, but once they find 'em they gorge on 'em. He theorizes they are easier to catch than mule deer.

Here's a few pics from the capture effort that put sheep on the Stansburys.

The sheep are EXTREMELY easy for cougars to catch. Sheep like to be tucked into covey holes where they can see below them. Cougars like to attack from above or the side. Either way, the sheep lose. The sheep will also let the cougars get within feet of them before spooking (I have seen this happen). Sheep can't move faster than the cat.

I have seen cougars go up vertical ledges with ease. Sheep can't do it, although they are cliff acrobats. I have seen cougars do some amazing things. There are way too many cats around here. 6 cats were hit on one of the busier roads near my house. The warden I talked to said there were a lot more than went unreported. I found one of them and he gave me a tag for the skull. Flinch

cool photo's

I keep applying for a bighorn tag here in MT and hope it comes before I'm too old to hunt 'em. Great pics! MTG

Flinch, thanks for the post.

Unfortunately wild sheep are very sensetive to some conditions while being very rugged to other conditions, put just one domestic sheep (range maggot) in with 1000 wild sheep and they will all be dead in a years time from pneumonia or some other calamity (cougar's and such).
Put them some place barren and desolite and they seem to thrive on seemingly nothing.

A few years ago UFNAWS the Utah DNR and Karl Malone transplanted a herd of sheep onto the east bench of Provo Utah with in eye shot of the BYU campus. WOW it was cool to see but it was obvious that it was destined to failure, not necessarily from cougars (plenty of those around too of the 4 leg and 2 leg design) but human encroachment and domestic animal encroachment.
wild sheep thrive when left alone even in the worst of environments.

Flinch, is that a trail camera on the tree in the first picture?
good photos btw.

Phew! What a relief. For a second there, I thought that you were talking about Montana cowboys.

KC

I do not agree Flinch. Sheep are only easy for lions to kill if they have no experience with them or they are caught away from good escape terrain.
In California, for instance, they are a real problem for the California Bighorn found in the Tioga Pass area off of Hwy 120 because the heavy snows drive them down to the valley floors where they have no steep habitat to evade them. Pressure from lions can and does force them to stay in the high country where they are vulnerable to avalanches, in that area.
In true desert areas they are rarely a problem simply because they can do well in areas where lions have insufficent water to remain in the area.
No, if the sheep see them coming and understand they are a threat, they will not get anywhere near them. While lions can handle steep country fairly well, they have limited lung power when pursuing prey.
I do agree, however, that poaching and introduced diseases from domestic livestock are serious problems for sheep. E

Eremicus, when you actually get out and see sheep and cougars interact, then get back to me with your findings. In two months time, I watched 14 different cougars raise hell on the local wildlife. I have the antlers of several really nice bucks that I witnessed get eaten by cougars. Don't even get me started on what they do to the sheep.

How many cougars have you actually seen in action and I don't mean on the Disney channel? I base my results on my actual experiences, not what some desk jockey wrote for his college paper, or what some petting zoo college student "saw".

As to the other poster. I don't know what that is in the tree. I have never noticed that before. These are free range sheep in a really rugged area. I don't know what a trail cam would be doing there, unless they feed on that bluff quite often. Flinch

Rockchucker, My brother in law lived in the last house up on the hill there above BYU. His neighbor had a nice Corvette parked out on the street. He went out one morning and there were a couple of nice rams perched on top of his Vet. They have a waxy substance in their hooves that helps them "stick" to the rocks. He still can't get it off of his vet...lol. Those rams are all but gone, due to dogs, cougars and getting hit by cars. A couple were poached as well. They just don't do well around here. Flinch

Flinch, I've been lots of places where there are both. No, I've never seen a cougar make a kill, but I've found a few of them. I also know, quite well, the guy that did both the Bighorn Sheep and the Cougar studies here in Kalifornia. He was the senior reasearcher for our fish and game department. He literally spent many years studying both, with all of the modern tools used for such things to say nothing of man power. If you want numbers, I've actually seen three lions in daylight. And several dozen sheep of both the desert and California varieties.
If sheep are living in less than wide open, not very steep country, particularly with lots of cover for the lions, then they can be a hazard to sheep. But with good steep country year round and very little vegetation to conceal a stalking lion, they do very well against them.
In other words, what you think goes on in your neighborhood may well be not the norm or you simply have a very limited or biased sampling. E

There is a log cabin perched on top of the cliff near the sheep. Perhaps that is a bird house they hung there? Nice observation though. I never noticed it before. Flinch

Sheep and deer are VERY curious of cougars. They do not run from them unless they get inside about 10 yards.

I watched a 170 class heavy horned buck for a couple of months. He lived on the same cliffy mountain where 5 cougars lived. Day after day, that stupid buck would watch the cougars sneak up on him. He finally got caught one day. The cougar hit him from behind as he tried to bolt. The cougar raked him down both sides of his body something fierce, but the wounds weren't terminal. That buck lost a LOT of hair. 4 days later, he wasn't so lucky. The cougar got right up to him, grabbed him by the neck and killed him. I have his antlers.

That buck had 4 nice bucks with him. The deer saw these cougars every day in the daylight. I have all 5 bucks antlers and they are all kitty litter. Believe me, these deer knew what cougars were and still let them get within 10 yards of them.

I watched a doe play cat and mouse with a big female cougar for over an hour. The doe would BARELY get away from the cat, turn around and go right back to within 20 yards of the cougar. The cougar would chase the doe, she would escape and go right back to the cougar again...taunting her. All this was going on while a 180 class buck fed a few yards away. The buck never even looked up.

Sheep will easily let cougars get under 10 yards of them before they will even stand up out of their beds. Sheep are extremely easy pickings for cougars. I don't care if it is in the mountains or plains.

I have seen over 25 cougars in the last few years. Only two were at night. I hate the dammmmn things. Flinch

Over the years, I've watched a lot of predator/prey interactions and been amazed at how passive prey are after escaping attacks. Many dash off a few yards and go back to foraging. It seems especially prevalent among flocking critters that find safety in numbers.

If it were me, I'd clear the horizon before stopping.

I've watched mule deer flee from shooters that expended several rounds, and the deer simply get out of sight and bed back down in 3 to 4 hundred yards.

Ewes with lambs though, seem to take eagles quite seriously by crowding together and keeping a watchful eye to the sky for a long time.

Due to rugged terrain, I find sheep much easier to work than deer or elk. I've been close enough to sheep that my 200 mm Nikor lens would not focus. I've not been able to do that with deer, elk, or pronghorn.

Flinch, there may be deer and sheep who have little experience with cougars and even some that underestimate them. As a rule though, if a cougar can get within 10 yds.of his prey, he can catch and kill it. I understand they are sucessful in 80% of their attacks.
I recall a very expensive deer transplant that was done with donated money once here. The deer were born and grew up on an island where there were no predators.
Some of these deer were fitted with radio telemetry collars and some with ear tags. Over the objections of the Bleeding Hearts, they were released in a hunting area.
By the end of the first year, all of them were dead. Almost all of them to predators, lions, coyotes, etc. None were taken by hunters as far as is known. E