Few animals are as closely tied to Wyoming’s high, broken country as the bighorn sheep. The state’s 1,433 records concentrate overwhelmingly in the northwest, Yellowstone National Park holds 855 of them, Park and Teton counties together carry nearly all the rest, and the Gros Ventre, North Absaroka, and Washakie wilderness areas fill in the rugged country between.
Built for cliffs
A bighorn’s world is steep. Rough-soled, elastic hooves grip rock that would defeat any predator, and ewes seek out the most broken ground they can find to lamb in late spring, using cliffs as nursery walls. That dependence on escape terrain, rather than elevation itself, is why herds also hold canyon rims and badland breaks far below the peaks.
Seasons on the sheep range
Records crest in May and June, when bands move onto visible spring range and newborn lambs start following their mothers across the ledges. Rams live apart for much of the year, then rejoin the ewes for the late-autumn rut, when males clash horns in contests that can echo across a canyon. Winter pushes herds onto lower, windswept slopes where the snow stays thin enough to paw through.
Status in Wyoming
NatureServe ranks the bighorn sheep S2, Imperiled, in Wyoming. Herds across the West were hit hard by past unregulated hunting and by pneumonia carried from domestic sheep. The species is native to the state, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
