Descendents of Floyd & Grace Lytle

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Big-horned Sheep In Rocky Mountain National Park On Saturday, May 26th, the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, my sports car club took a drive through Rocky Mountain National Park. On the way back, there was this small herd of big-horned sheep grazing along the highway. Usually the sheep stay away from the highways and you have to hike up into the high mountains to see them. But this group was right along a convenient stretch of highway where there was room for cars full of tourists to pull over and hopefully not scare them away. The sheep on the far left is prancing around. A pickup passed by the crowd and honked his horn real loud,  and that scared the sheep. On the right, that's not the most desirable end of the animal. How does that old saying go? It's the southbound end of a northbound big-horn sheep. But we're a family of hunters and fishermen so we're used to seeing that end of the livestock. In the picture on the right, the sheep in the middle is one of the oldest ones, because he has the biggest horns. An expert on big horned sheep told me he's probably 5 to 7 years old. They count the ridges on the horns to figure the age. In the picture on the left you can tell the youngest sheep have the shortest horns. They were probably born just this spring sometime. On the right you can see the longer horns on the older sheep. The picture on the left is the best of the set. One thing that I noticed but never thought about--they have wool. After all, they are sheep.

A couple of times while I was taking pictures, a few tourists would get loud, and I had to shush them so they wouldn't scare the sheep away. Once or twice the sheep ran towards the mountain and stopped, so eventually the people got the idea to be quiet.

Since these are younger sheep, they haven't learned yet to stay away from man. Of course, in the national park it's a fine of several thousand dollars and a few years in prison for hunting sheep or any other animals. It's also against the law to use spotlights on them at night.

Rocky Mountain National Park is really just a zoo without fences. You can walk right up to the animals, but they'll run away before you get there, and then the park rangers will give you a strict warning and even throw you out of the park.

These are wild animals, and if they feel threatened they may decide to attack instead of just running away. A good head butt from one of these small sheep could put a person in the hospital. I was about 50 feet away and used my 300mm lens to take these pictures.

What really catches my attention is the horns, in the picture on the left. The full mature sheep have horns that circle all the way around. This one is still young. Those horns look heavy and massive.

In this last row of pictures you can see exactly what I meant: no fences. They were just right on the side of the highway.