This particular adventure began on a Tuesday morning in January. My boss was originally scheduled to handle media relations at the Laramie Peak bighorn sheep release the following morning but had a conflict. Would I like to go in his place?Would I? Would I? Do bears…well, you know the rest.
I’ve been itching to participate in a project like this. I had the chance to join the bighorn sheep release near Lovell last winter, but passed the opportunity on to our Wyoming Wildlife News editor, knowing he too was dying to go. I’d also missed out on a few elk captures and bird bandings due to previous commitments. No way was I going to miss this! Even a 5 a.m. departure time couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm as I bustled around the office and later around my house, gathering warm clothes and camera equipment for the big event.
The Laramie Peak bighorn sheep herd, roaming the territory of eastern Albany and western Platte counties, has been supplemented six times with 171 bighorns between 1964 and 1989, all with animals from the Whiskey Basin herd near Dubois. For the last two years, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department Bighorn Sheep Working Group, along with the Laramie and Casper Game and Fish regions, had been discussing another bighorn transplant, this time with sheep from the Paradise-Perma herd in western Montana.
Two years of work was coming to fruition that morning, as we passed snow plows and skittered across icy roads to Rock River, where we’d meet the trailers hauling the bighorns and the rest of the release crew. Apparently I wasn’t the only one excited at the thought of seeing the release. A contingent of reporters, county commissioners, landowners, Wyoming Department of Agriculture personnel and members of FNAWS, the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, had all shown up to witness the event.
A severe lack of sleep and breakfast was making me a little grumpy. I admit I was feeling a little sorry for myself as I disembarked our Excursion in search of another cup of coffee in the gas station. Then I saw the Game and Fish capture crew and realized what a big wuss I was.
Wheatland wildlife biologist Martin Hicks, Game Warden Craig Smith, Warden Trainee Jon Stephens and Wheatland Habitat Extension Biologist Ryan Amundson were the Game and Fish crew that went to Montana to help trap and transport the sheep. For the last 36 hours, they’d been on their feet, netting and processing bighorn sheep. Then they’d driven 18 hours with their precious cargo in tow across some pretty treacherous Montana and Wyoming roads. One look at an exhausted Jon Stephens, normally all smiles and energy, told me I needed to buck up.
It was almost another hour to the release site from our rendezvous point at Rock River. I busied myself visiting with two members of the press we had in the vehicle with us and reading the project proposal form for background on the transplant.
This project was not only intended to enhance the long-term viability of the herd, but would also provide the chance for site-specific information gathering of the bighorns' use of recently burned habitat. Wildfires burned more than 35,000 acres of the area in 2002, and habitat conditions seemed ripe for a transplant of sheep. The capture crew had fitted 30 of the bighorns with Global Positioning System collars that would take locations every few hours and store that information on-board the collar. After 16 months, the collars are programmed to fall off of the animals. The information can then be retrieved and the locations overlaid onto maps that could be used to analyze everything from habitat selection to lambing location and reproductive rates.
Finally, we came to a stop. Ahead, the three trailers were in place, backdoors facing a rocky hill, perfect bighorn habitat. All of us looky-loos who weren’t part of the capture crew stood off to one side of the trailer, positioning ourselves for a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
We waited in reverent silence. The trailer door opened, and with a little encouragement, the first group of ewes sprang from the trailer, bounded across the prairie and filed up a natural trail in the rocks my human eyes couldn’t see the sheep called my attention to it.
The first thing I noticed was their size. Maybe I’ve spent too much time down at CSU, but I imagined bighorns being these incredibly large, massive animals. True, these were all young bighorn ewes, but they were small, not much bigger than the domestic sheep I used to show at county fair.
Now it was the boys’ turn. Six or seven rams leapt from their temporary home and sprinted to join the ewes. Two rams took a hard left turn, disappearing into the hillside adjacent to the rest of the herd.
Finally, the last trailer door was opened and the final ewes were released. That’s when I saw her, my wildlife counterpart. This ewe was at the back of the pack leaping from the trailer. She hit the ground, took one step, tripped, skidded on her chest and was promptly run over by the three remaining ewes. Only slightly dazed, she rolled to her feet and bolted to catch the herd. Soon, all the bighorns were out of sight, making their new home in Wyoming.
The audience responded with cheers, whoops and clapping. The capture crew members, suddenly not so tired, were all smiles as they talked with reporters. The FNAWS members toasted with what I can only presume was cola. The landowners, members of multiple generations of two families that have been ranching that country for decades, smiled at the newest additions to their land.
I smiled because I had finally found my favorite wild animal. Forget the magnificent elk, the wily coyote, the fearsome badger or graceful hawk. If I were a wild creature, I would be that bighorn ewe who took a digger. In the big moment, all eyes on her, she trips. That’s so me…spilling my drink down my shirt on a first date, running into the pole and missing the ball on game point in volleyball, succumbing to a nervous coughing fit in the middle of a big interview. Never as sure-footed, graceful or confident as I wanted to be, but always finding my own way through life's little missteps.
Somewhere in the Laramie Peak Area is a bighorn ewe with some banged up knees and a plucky little spirit who I’ll remember the rest of my days as my favorite wild animal. Good luck, little ewe, I know you’ll do well.
