I have looked for Bighorn Sheep many times while visiting various national parks such as Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park. Just once I saw several rams up close while they were bedded down at Rocky Mountain National Park as pictured above. I never realized they could be seen up close about 1 hour from our house. Luckily our friend Mark Schraad is very familar with sites to see big mammals in the Rockies. He took us to Pilar and we couldn't believe how close we got! Aditya had never seen Bighorn and I had never seen them standing up.

We saw a large herd and this male was the most impressive with his huge horns that have seen plenty of action based on the numerous battle scars this guy had.

Aditya got a lot of nice closeup shots!

Mark took us during the rut so we were hoping to see some head butting but knew this would be difficult to see. Even Mark had rarely seen the head butting. These impressive rams were happily grazing showing no signs of the rut.

But after observing for a while we did notice that the males were sniffing at the females showing that mating season may have been getting under way.

We then saw that occasionally a disagreement would break out and rams would face off against one another.

Then once we actually saw a younger ram challenge one of the dominant males. It didn't result in a big head butting battle but we were super excited to see it. After watching for about an hour we heard the horns connect twice. Even though this wasn't a full blown battle it was still very loud.

Also, we noticed that often the rams would get their horns tangled up which also lead to disagreements. I first thought this would have been a more impressive picture if the dominant male wasn't happily chomping on grass during this encounter. But then Aditya and I looked up some National Geographic videos which showed that rams use every trick in the book in the battles. Often one pretends to graze and then lands a cheap shot when the other ram isn't looking. Another common ploy is to go for the butt to soften up the other ram. So the behavior we saw is actually pretty indicative of the rut. We just never saw the big battle. We're forever grateful to Mark for showing us this spectacle that is so close to home. We hope to keep looking and some day we may see a big head butting battle!

---

 

Back

 

 Home         Artist Profile        Gallery        Contact        Guestbook