Bighorn sheep moved from Wild Horse Island
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BIG ARM — Dangling like fuzzy dice from a rearview mirror, three Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep laced into orange bags and sporting matching orange blindfolds hung from a helicopter as they made the journey from Wild Horse Island to Big Arm State Park.
With no predators on the island, the population of bighorn sheep is larger than the island can support, so Fish, Wildlife and Parks personnel are relocating some of the sheep to the Tendoy area near Dillon.
A complete wildlife laboratory crew and wildlife veterinarian plus FWP personnel and volunteers quickly carry the sheep to straw bales upon their landing on the mainland. Ewes weigh approximately 150 pounds; young rams from 175 to 200 pounds; and some of the big rams tip the scales at 250 pounds. A yearling lamb could be 50 to 75 pounds.
Hobbled with smooth leather straps and with their eyes covered, the sheep are quiet. First, the crew takes each animal’s temperature. Jennifer Ramsey, wildlife vet, explained that “with sheep, you worry about them overheating.” Their normal temperature is 101 or 102 degrees Fahrenheit. If a temperature rises, sheep are doused with cold water.
The well-trained crew also inoculated each sheep with a general antibiotic, an anti-parasitic and a boost of vitamin e and selenium.
“If a sheep is hot, he or she is given an anti-inflammatory,” Ramsey added.
Workers switched the blindfolds for soft cloth ones, drew blood, to check for viruses, took nasal swabs, collected fecal samples to examine for parasites, swabbed the back of each sheep’s throat and ear-tagged each animal. Five sheep were fitted with radio collars for future data collection.
Ramsey said the herd health is pretty good, and the crew knows what they are dealing with since this is the third year in a row the FWP have relocated sheep from the island.
After all the testing, the sheep are carried in a tarp to a waiting stock trailer. All the open areas in the trailers are covered with particleboard. Once inside the trailer, crew members remove the hobbles and the blindfold.
The animals are not tranquilized.
“The ewes and lambs are fairly docile. They pop right up,” explained Bruce Sterling, a wildlife biologist from Thompson Falls.
Craig Fager, wildlife biologist from the Tendoy Mountains, agreed and commented that the sheep trailer well. He noted the goal was to net 50 sheep from Wild Horse Island to augment an existing herd of from 30 to 50 animals in the Tendoys.
“The population objective is about 200,” Fager said, “for viewing and sport hunting.”
“It’s a tough game out there,” Fager said, motioning towards Wild Horse Island.
The sheep are smart and hide in the trees where it is more difficult for the gunner in the helicopter to shoot a net over them. After a sheep is netted, “muggers” hold the sheep down, hobble it and lace it into its traveling bag.
No snow makes the process tougher, Ramsey said, because snow slows the animals down and pads their landing.
Quicksilver Air, which specializes in animal capture and is headquartered in Colorado and Alaska, provided the helicopter, muggers and net-gunner and specializes in animal capture.
This method of capture takes less time than the old method of transporting the sheep from the island by boat, although flying is expensive.
To fund the transplant and other wild sheep activities, the FWP and the Montana Wild Sheep Foundation auctioned off a Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep permit at Wild Sheep Foundation National Convention in Reno, Nev, and raised $300,000.
Of this money, 90 percent went to the Fish Wildlife and Parks and funded the sheep relocation.
The other 10 percent went to the Montana Wild Sheep Foundation, and that group provided the radio collars for the Wild Horse Island sheep, according to Mark Menke, foundation member.
At the end of the day, Fager and Kevin Hughes will head back to Dillon with full trailers and release the bighorn sheep into their new home.
