JREG19
Lil-Rokslider
Feb 3 and 4th, I volunteered with the Idaho Wild Sheep Foundation to capture Bighorn Sheep with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
I'm writing this to encourage you to be a part of the Wild Sheep Foundation on a national and local level. Sheep do not support themselves like deer and elk, there's just not enough tags to get the proper funding.
I got an email the week before the capture, saying they needed volunteers. I knew I had to be a part of it. This was my first time volunteering with IDWSF.
The captures that I was apart of were along the Salmon River. The main objective was to catch 8 ewes that had previously tested positive for Movi (a respiratory disease). We wanted to see: do they still test positive? Are they positive but relatively healthy? Are they positive and sick (etc.)? if they test positive twice, they are culled.
The process: a plane would fly around using telemetry to find the Sheep. After the plane found them, he radioed to a helicopter with their location. The helicopter would then try to find the specific ewes that previously tested positive (they call them "dirty girls"). Once the dirty girls were identified, a crew member used a net gun to capture the Sheep. After the Sheep was caught a "mugger" would go down, blind fold, and hobble the Sheep. After the Sheep was hobbled they put her in a "sling" and attached her to the bottom of the helicopter and flew her to us at the "sling site." Once the Sheep touched down, we got her over to a scale and weighed her. After we weighed her, we laid her down on a tarp and immediately checked her temperature. If she was too warm we put snow and water on her to cool her down. We kept a constant eye on that temperature. Then all at the same time we got an age on her, we took blood, a nasal swab, an ultrasound of her back to make sure she had a good amount of fat, we also did an ultrasound to see if she was pregnant, we looked for scabies and any other injuries, finally we added ear tags and a GPS collar to track them. Once we were done with our testing we carried them away from our tools and released her. We caught 15 ewes the first day and I think 18 the second.
This was a pretty amazing experience and I encourage any one who has the opportunity to go on one of these, to do it.
It was hard to get some good pics because of all the people.
I'm writing this to encourage you to be a part of the Wild Sheep Foundation on a national and local level. Sheep do not support themselves like deer and elk, there's just not enough tags to get the proper funding.
I got an email the week before the capture, saying they needed volunteers. I knew I had to be a part of it. This was my first time volunteering with IDWSF.
The captures that I was apart of were along the Salmon River. The main objective was to catch 8 ewes that had previously tested positive for Movi (a respiratory disease). We wanted to see: do they still test positive? Are they positive but relatively healthy? Are they positive and sick (etc.)? if they test positive twice, they are culled.
The process: a plane would fly around using telemetry to find the Sheep. After the plane found them, he radioed to a helicopter with their location. The helicopter would then try to find the specific ewes that previously tested positive (they call them "dirty girls"). Once the dirty girls were identified, a crew member used a net gun to capture the Sheep. After the Sheep was caught a "mugger" would go down, blind fold, and hobble the Sheep. After the Sheep was hobbled they put her in a "sling" and attached her to the bottom of the helicopter and flew her to us at the "sling site." Once the Sheep touched down, we got her over to a scale and weighed her. After we weighed her, we laid her down on a tarp and immediately checked her temperature. If she was too warm we put snow and water on her to cool her down. We kept a constant eye on that temperature. Then all at the same time we got an age on her, we took blood, a nasal swab, an ultrasound of her back to make sure she had a good amount of fat, we also did an ultrasound to see if she was pregnant, we looked for scabies and any other injuries, finally we added ear tags and a GPS collar to track them. Once we were done with our testing we carried them away from our tools and released her. We caught 15 ewes the first day and I think 18 the second.
This was a pretty amazing experience and I encourage any one who has the opportunity to go on one of these, to do it.
It was hard to get some good pics because of all the people.
