Desert Bighorn Populations Question

[Syncerus1]

All I can add, is that from personal on the ground experience on our ranch, we have sheep on a hit list from early October of 2025. The six biggest rams we knew/have seen on the ranch and only had 1 killed. The other 5 are still there and alive (hopefully)! We had one of 8 hunters kill a ram no one has ever seen before @ 186 & 6/8 green. Our 2 biggest rams we know of are flirting with the magic 190" class. Some hunts are stupid easy, and some hunts are not. Hunters without knowledge of the type of terrain and thornbrush think it is a slam dunk. I can tell you from both FR & HF hunts can be highly rewarding. On our place you can kill a mid-170's sheep in a day with a rifle, but if you area little selctive the upper 178+ rams take a bit of work, and generally a fair amount of time behind the glass. We hunt safari style, move and glass, repeat. The issue is the sheep only move for a few hours a day. Then they lay up and snooze, in rocky steep hillsides covered with brush or in thorn covered mountainsides near suitable vantage points where they feel protected. Having said that, sheep are sheep and do stupid things. I had a mid 170's FR ram walk out of endless desert mountains to a fairly flat sparsely covered broad pass, where a hunter shot him from a SxS while driving the dirt road. Go figure...