Overview
The Rocky Mountain bighorn is the largest sheep in North America and one of the largest in the world. It is a heavy-bodied animal with massive horns and a full, coarse, grayish-brown coat. The muzzle is white, as are the backs of the front legs and insides of hind legs. The belly is white in the groin area, with the white color sometimes extending forward onto the chest. The rump patch is large and white, surrounding the dark tail. The horns are very thick at the base and tend to carry the thickness throughout their length. Typically, the horns curl close to the head and are broomed off at the eyes where further growth would interfere with vision. Females have short, thin horns.
Taxonomy
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Mammal
- Order
- Artiodactyla
- Family
- Bovidae
- Genus
- Ovis
- Species
- Bighorn sheep, canadensis
Habitat
These animals frequent mountain ridges and basins, usually above the timber line, but often in timbered areas as well.
Diet
Bighorn sheep feed on grasses in the summer and browse in the fall and winter.
Behavior
These animals have wide-set eyes that provide a large angle of vision, as well as sharp hearing and a highly developed sense of smell, allowing Bighorns to detect dangers at great distances. The sexes remain separate except during the breeding season. Lambs are born in the spring, walk soon after birth, and nurse for six months. Rams will determine their hierarchy at the start of the breeding season, and males may ram each other headfirst at speeds up to 40 mph (64 kmh). This act is repeated until one animal concedes. Bighorn sheep skulls are thick and bony to absorb this repeated impact and prevent injury to the ram. They are great swimmers as well.
Hunting
Surveys indicate that bighorn hunts have the lowest success rates of all sheep hunts. All U.S. states where these sheep are found issue permits on a draw basis with some of the states restricting the permits to residents only. High demand and low odds of drawing a tag leave booking a hunt in British Columbia or Alberta as a rather expensive alternative. Many current populations of Bighorn sheep are the result of introduction, but we treat all as indigenous for record-keeping purposes.
Conservation Status
The IUCN status (2002) of Ovis canadensis (all subspecies) is listed as low risk/conservation dependent.