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Bighorn Sheep 
COMMON NAME (S): Bighorn Sheep (Bighorn) SCIENTIFIC NAME: Ovis canadensis CLASSIFICATION: Phylum: Chordata DESCRIPTION: Length: 5.5-6 feet (1.7-1.8 meters) including tail RANGE: Isolated area of the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. HABITAT: Isolated mountain meadows up to the treeline that provide forage, water and escape terrain. STATUS: General: Secure. DIET: Consists primarily of alpine and meadow grasses in the summer and browse in the winter. Salt and mineral deposits provide essential dietary supplements. REPRODUCTION: Breeding season extends from October through December. The gestation period is about six to six and a half months. Generally, the female gives birth to one lamb. At birth, lambs weigh about six to seven pounds each. LIFE SPAN: About 10 years BEHAVIOR: Bighorn are gregarious animals that stay in herds of 10-25 animals. Mature rams stay in bachelor herds except during the breeding season. Ewes, lambs and juvenile males form a separate herd. Mature males compete in butting jousts to determine dominance or social status. These bouts can occur any time but are more prevalent during the rut as the rams rejoin the ewe bands. Two rivals will face each other at a distance, rear on their hind legs, drop to all fours, converge and finally slam together head-on to produce a loud crack. Their specially adapted skulls and neck tendons and vertebre prevent serious injury. NAMES: adult male - ram; adult female - ewe; baby - lamb; group - herd or flock SOURCES: Mountain Sheep, Valerius Geist Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery 1804-1806
While wintering at Fort Mandan, the Corps heard stories of a great sheep with large curling horns that inhabited the high bluffs of the Missouri River. "the places they gerally celect to lodg is the cranies or cevices of the rocks in the faces of inacessable precipices, where the wolf nor bear can reach them and where indeed man himself would in many instancies find a similar deficiency; yet these animals bound from rock to rock and stand apparently in the most careless manner on the sides of precipices of many hundred feet. they are very shye and are quick of both sent and sight." Lewis, May 25th 1805. "about 11 A.M. we entered the high clay broken country white clay hills and the white walls resembling ancient towns & buildings & C. Saw a flock of big horn or Ibex on the top of those walls. We halted and the 2 Fields killed two large Rams which had large horns. Capt. Lewis had them scallintinized and all the bones & horns as well as the Skin to take to the Seat of government." Ordway, 29th July 1806 *All journal entries as originally written by Corps Members. Click here for a list of animals Lewis & Clark saw on their journey. |
