I was following the Game and Fish habitat biologist to the top of Whiskey Mountain on a scientific mission to collect bighorn sheep manure. Scat. Droppings.  Call it what you will. What’s more, it had to be fresh, “warm and damp” to be precise. Therefore we were on the lookout for sheep, up close and about as personal as you can get. 

 

The Whiskey Mountain Bighorn Sheep Herd, once the largest herd of Rocky Mountain bighorns in the world, has suffered a dramatic population decline since a pneumonia outbreak in 1991. The excruciating slowness of the ongoing recovery is attributable to a number of variables, one of which is lungworm. A certain amount of lungworm is normal, but a heavy load combined with pneumonia virus is lethal.  So I was helping the biologist gather droppings, which would be sent to a lab, ground up, and examined under a microscope for lungworm larvae. Ever try picking up raisins while wearing ski gloves?  Since that didn’t work so well, you know the rest, and yes, I did ask about my chances of catching lungworm. 

 

Whiskey Mountain in the winter is a physically challenging combination of slopes scoured by the relentless wind, thigh-high snow in the timber, and massive drifts in the lee of any feature breaking the wind. Drifts on the leeward side of the highest ridge stood over 12 feet high. Along these drifts grow the only trees on the slope, a result of the moisture slowly released as the drifts melt in the spring. Those trees themselves create smaller drifts, and consequently more snow stays on the mountain. Predictably, over the crest on the windward side the frozen ground was completely bare and void of trees. This is bighorn sheep country. They can see forever. The Upper Wind River Valley with the Absaroka Range as a dramatic backdrop spread out below, and through binoculars I found the school and post office. The sheep have a million dollar view from up here, plus, the sparse vegetation is conveniently exposed for grazing. 

 

Just as expected, there they were, a group of about 25 ewes and lambs, grazing, resting, keeping a vigilant eye out for predators, and doing what sheep do on bare slopes in the winter. Lucky for us, it was still fresh.

– Ellen Vanuga