Bringing Back Bighorn Sheep - Texas Parks and Wildlife [Official] Video Lecture | Hunter Education: Becoming an Expert Hunter - Hobbies

[wind]
[music]
Scattered through this rough, broken
landscape of the west Texas desert
exists a survivor.
A nomad of this vacant land,
the Desert Bighorn Sheep has
been seen by only a few.
And, if it were not for a
handful of biologists,
the bighorn would be gone
from Texas forever.
At the turn of the century,
pioneer cattlemen,
the railroad
and permanent civilization
established themselves in the
mountains of western Texas.
Until this settlement
of Europeans,
as many as 2,000 bighorns
roamed freely here.
Today, because of man's influences,
there are no native
Texas Bighorns left.
[music]
Wanting to repopulate west Texas
with the Desert Bighorn,
Texas Parks & Wildlife began
capturing sheep from other states
and moving them to the
land they once roamed.
Having never been done before,
the first attempts at capturing the
bighorns were highly experimental,
with each capture teaching
biologists something new.
The first efforts at
capturing bighorns
took place in
southwestern Arizona.
Tom Moore was in
charge of the operation
and Don Frels was a student
intern at the time.
We started the bighorn
project in 1956.
We had a lot of experience catching
and transplanting
mule deer and antelope,
but bighorn were a different matter
in different terrain.
The program back then
was very slow.
We took 3 summers to catch
what we considered
13 prime sheep.
At that time we were
catching them
in net fences built around
a water hole
and people watching
that particular trap
and if sheep went in it they just
reached over and cut a wire
that went over to the trap
and held the door up
and the door just fell
behind them.
And then we'd just wrestle with
them a good bit
and it'd get kind of western
now and then.
And we'd give the sheep
a shot of that tranquilizer
and then strap him
on a stretcher,
carry him down the mountain
and put him on the truck.
We had one old sheep in a trap,
so I put a rope around
his antlers--his horns
and I said 'let him go'
so down I went with him
and I had the end of the rope
and he followed the trail
down to the truck
and he just stopped, and he took
a breather and I did too.
We took 13 sheep back to Texas.
And I'll never forget the
first lamb that we saw.
That was a real red letter day
when we
were looking at those sheep
and we suddenly saw
a young lamb nursing a ewe
on top of one of those hills.
[music]
During the 1970s and '80s
2 completely different capturing
techniques were used,
one in Mexico
and another in Nevada,
each with very different results.
Jack Kilpatric was in charge of the
Bighorn Sheep program
and the captures during
those years.
There's really not much comparison
except that both traps
were after sheep
is about the only
comparison.
One using capture darts with drugs
which are highly dangerous.
Another is, uh, you know,
just
physically restraining animals
that are baited in under a net.
The helicopter tranquilizer darts
that we used in Mexico,
we would locate the sheep that we
wanted to put a dart in it
then we would back off
until the drug took effect
and we'd get a hold of the animal
and strap it down
and then we'd fly over
the mountains with it.
We caught 12 head.
We lost 4 of those
basically to drug problems,
problems with them being pregnant.
Utilizing the drop net like we did
to get those animals out of Nevada,
you have to bait an area
then whenever
you see the animals under there
you want to capture,
you just fire off a charge.
[fire]
Then you just have to work them
out of the net
hobble them and blindfold them
to restrain them.
We brought back 15 head.
No animals were lost to injury
or anything.
Between the two it's a very,
very more successful,
highly successful
compared to the old
capture dart method.
[music]
In 1994, from the mountains alongside
Lake Mead in Nevada,
Texas Parks and Wildlife captured
20 Bighorn Sheep
and transplanted them in Texas.
Doug Humphries was in charge
of the operation.
We'll be using helicopter
net gun techniques.
Nevada has the resource.
They have a lot of
desert bighorn sheep
and like other states that have
an excess or
a quality number sheep,
they're willing to help states that
are trying to do restoration work.
[music]
The desert bighorn,
it's not just a sheep.
It's a sheep that has adapted
to a very hostile,
sometimes very
unpredictable environment.
In some places you're amazed that
anything can survive in these areas
where you find desert sheep.
So I think they're survivors.
[music]
We're trying to do something
for future generations,
not just for the immediate gain
of yes we have sheep in Texas.
I think that it would be better to
have our grandchildren think that
they've always been here
and they never knew that
they had to be restored,
that they just take it as natural.
[music]
I'll be taking blood samples,
testing for a variety of
known diseases to wildlife and
to domestic animals.
We're going to collar all adult
animals that we do
receive from Nevada
for monitoring especially during
the first 30 to 60 days
and this way we can keep
track of sheep movements.
For some of the rams we'll take a--
they call them pit tags,
it's a permanent ID tag
and what it is is a transducer,
very similar to a
bar code on a box of cereal
or something like that.
The the only difference is we have to
drill a hole into the horn
and we'll epoxy the little pit tags
glass canister that the
transducer is contained in
and you'll glue that into the horn.
As long as you can find that horn
and you have a wand
you'll get that unique ID code
for that animal.
Loaded in the trailer,
the 20 captured sheep settled down
for their 22 hour ride
from Lake Mead, Nevada
to the Black Gap Wildlife
Management Area in Texas.
[music]
Proud and free,
these bighorn will find new life
on this open land,
land their ancestors called home.
This is when a biologist gets
his pat on the back,
when you get to see
the critters do that.
That makes it all worthwhile.
It really does.
To me it's exhilarating to know
you had some small part
in securing that foot hold
for that population.
I think that for me is what
personally keeps me going.
[music]
History has taught biologists how
to refine their techniques
in capturing and relocating
wild sheep.
Because of these lessons,
there are over 300 Desert
Bighorn Sheep in Texas today
and their future looks promising.
This population will grow and expand
and more animals will be
populating the Big Bend
area of Texas.
That's the whole hope for a lot of us.
It's not just for us
or the short term.
We're looking long term,
way past my career
and many others.
That's our legacy.
We want to get it in
one condition
but leave it in a better condition
than the way we found it
and I think this kind of transplant
is a step in that direction.