Christmas for me has always been a sort love/hate relationship! I think the whole world loves it but me, Halloween is my favorite of course and the “Dia De Los Muertos” or by another name the day of the dead celebration. Sure I'd love to be somewhere fly fishing for trout or salmon, but I left home and wandered on over to the North Fork road to see if I could locate some of Wyoming's bighorn sheep, and low and behold I did. I usually start hitting my usual places in mid-December but I didn't make any early trips this year! Once you turn 80, which I did this year, one slows down some ...

For those of you who venture out to find the sheep, you know the females with the young are first to show, followed by the big males who come down from up in the higher elevations, bringing with them the rut. They all stay down for most of our winter, and I have photographed them as late as the end of February, before they all head up again. 

Thursday I stumbled on three different groups that had two to three males in each group, and one of the groups had five males. I did see another whole group but they were 200 or 300 feet higher up in a swale out of the wind. I must also mention that it was a rain snow mix as I was shooting the whole time, which can be seen in my photos. All totaled we saw roughly 50 give or take. Each year when I get out to do this I'm always anxious to see them, because we like to see how they look, and so far this year’s batch looks quite good, which was nice to see!

I plan to go back another time or two but hope I get to shoot during a dry and sunny day. It is said that Wyoming is home to roughly 6,000 to 7,000 individual bighorn sheep, though that does fluctuate from year to year. The three biggest strongholds are Wind River area, Bighorn Mountains and the Tetons. The males weigh between 120 to 300 pounds, with the larger Rocky Mountain sheep weighing in at 200 to 300 pounds. The curled horns can weigh up to 30 pounds or so. The males stand much taller than the females coming in at 5 to 6 feet tall.  Ewes, the female sheep, weigh about 30% to 40% less than the males.