Western Hunting Journal, Premiere Issue whj001_premiere | Page 57

Having a good team with a sin-
gle-minded goal is a huge benefit
when hunting bighorn sheep.
Pictured is Pat Hoglund, Travis
Moncrief and Kevin Madison.
sheep tag, which I suspect has
to do with the body size of a ma-
ture ram and its horns. Horns
from a California bighorn are
not as heavy and flare away
from the lower jaw whereas
horns from a Rocky Mountain
bighorn form a tighter curve
and are heavier throughout. A
mature Rocky Mountain weighs
upwards of 250 pounds while a
mature California weighs close
to 200 pounds.
It was not lost on me that
to have been drawn for the tag
meant I defied the odds beyond
most people’s comprehension.
The odds of me drawing my
tag were 0.7752 percent. To
put those odds in a different
perspective, I had a 99.2248
percent chance of not drawing
the tag. No doubt, Lady Luck
smiled down on me.
Oregon is blessed to have a
healthy bighorn sheep popu-
lation thanks in large part to
the state’s commitment to re-
introduce bighorns after they
went extinct. Bighorn sheep
were native to Oregon, however
hoglund
There are two subspecies
of bighorn sheep in Oregon,
Rocky Mountain and California
bighorns. Rocky Mountains are
bigger bodied rams with larger
and heavier horns. Their range
is generally associated with
northeast Oregon. Hunting
opportunities exist in the Ea-
gle Cap Wilderness area of the
Wallowa Mountains and the
Snake River drainage. Califor-
nia bighorn sheep, meanwhile,
are more widespread and their
populations are considerably
higher. California bighorns are
found in central Oregon’s John
Day River and Deschutes River
drainages, and in various parts
of southeast Oregon. There are
even a few pockets of Califor-
nia sheep in northeast Oregon.
To give you an example of
bighorn sheep populations,
Oregon gave out 73 California
bighorn sheep tags in 2017,
and only six Rocky Mountain
sheep tags. Interestingly, there
were 3,183 applications for the
six Rocky Mountain tags, and
15,210 applicants for the 73
California sheep tags. For every
one Rocky Mountain sheep tag
there were 530 applicants com-
pared to 208 applications for
every California sheep tag. De-
spite the fact that there’s fewer
sheep, it’s clear that more hunt-
ers covet a Rocky Mountain
agreed it would have been dif-
ficult at first, but easier in the
long run. But at the time going
downhill seemed like a simpler,
easier alternative. It wasn’t.
California bighorn sheep pop-
ulations all but disappeared in
1915. Difficult winters, disease
and unregulated hunting con-
tributed to their demise. To-
day, Oregon has approximately
3,700 California bighorn sheep
spread throughout the state
in 37 different herds. The state
estimates there are 800 Rocky
Mountain bighorn sheep that
are concentrated in pockets
throughout northeast Oregon.
Present day populations are a
result from reintroducing big-
horns back through the state
and conservation groups like
the Wild Sheep Foundation,
and it’s Oregon chapter, the
Foundation For North Ameri-
can Wild Sheep.
The first reintroduction oc-
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