Sheep tags bring in thousands for conservation
ROCKY BOY’S RESERVATION, Montana — For the herd of bighorn sheep, the rocky cliffs were a safe place, with 360-degree views and plenty of nooks to blend into the gray rocks. The ground was sprinkled with scat, and the air carried a scent like a barnyard. Thousands of feet below, the landscape unfurled into a smooth checkerboard of ranch land that stretched to the horizon.
Crouched behind a stand of rocks last spring, Brendan Burns, a 38-year-old with a growing reputation as a sheep hunter and guide, peered over the edge, careful not to be seen or heard. Wild sheep have acute senses, and when they spook, they bolt as one, like a flock of birds. But the sheep were not home. Amid the panorama below, Burns spotted a constellation of tiny dots in a faraway meadow. The horns gave them away.
“There aren’t a lot of circles in the wild,” Burns whispered. “When you see something curved — and they kind of shine, they have this kind of glow to them — you learn to pick them up. You just train your eye to it.”
Eight years before, there were no sheep here. Then 21 ewes and five juvenile rams were transplanted to the Rocky Boy’s Reservation of the Chippewa Cree, which straddles part of the Bears Paw Mountains, an islandlike rise on the plains.
The herd quickly grew to 100, and 40 were relocated to South Dakota. It has again grown to more than 100, and another 40 are likely to be transplanted this spring, part of broad attempts to replant sheep populations that are a fraction of what they once were in the West.
“There’s obviously no coyotes around, for them to be that low and feel comfortable,” Burns whispered. “This is a nice day to be a sheep.”
A man from Michigan had paid $100,000 for the year’s only chance to hunt one sheep in the herd on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation. Burns brought him there in October, and the men
traipsed through the steep and rocky terrain for days before getting themselves in position for a clean shot. The ram was 10 years old, with a scar on its forehead, a cloudy eye and several missing teeth.
Its massive horns and about 80 pounds of meat were hauled back to Michigan. In exchange, the Chippewa Cree tribe at Rocky Boy’s received the $100,000, which was used to fund two tribal game wardens overseeing wildlife on the reservation.
It is a paradox of hunting, rarely so conspicuous as with wild sheep: The hunters are often the primary conservationists. In 2013, a permit in Montana sold for $480,000, still a record. Burns assisted on that hunt, too, over 18 days in the Upper Missouri River Breaks. The result was a large ram, and hundreds of thousands of dollars that went into the budget of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
“As far as sheep-hunting being a rich man’s sport, that’s absolutely true,” said Vance Corrigan, 84, who lives along the Yellowstone River in Livingston, Montana, and is one of the most accomplished biggame hunters in the world. “But if it weren’t for the rich man, those sheep wouldn’t be there.”
‘A Rich Man’s Sport’
At the Wild Sheep Foundation’s convention each January, single hunting permits from various states, provinces and Indian reservations are auctioned off to the highest bidders. Most go for much more than $100,000.
“People who pay $300,000 for a tag, they just paid to recover 30 sheep to places that haven’t had sheep in 100 years,” Corrigan said. “Lewis and Clark saw sheep on every ridge. Those people buying tags are helping put sheep back where they were before we arrived.”
Globally, there are dozens of species and subspecies of wild sheep, many in Central Asia. The Wild Sheep Foundation, based in Bozeman, Montana, considers there to be four primary wild sheep in North America: the Rocky Mountain bighorn; the desert bighorn (in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico); Dall’s sheep (commonly called Dall sheep, in Alaska, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon); and Stone’s sheep (or Stone sheep, in British Columbia and the Yukon).
Dall’s and Stone’s sheep are considered thinhorns, in contrast to bighorns. Another subspecies, the Sierra Nevada bighorn, is federally protected, with population figures in the hundreds.
Some have estimated that there were millions of wild sheep in North America 200 years ago. But by the 1950s, squeezed out by people and livestock and decimated by disease, the wild sheep population dwindled into the tens of thousands.
Conservation efforts saved the sheep and have expanded their territory again, often by transplanting herds and greatly limiting hunting opportunities. It is estimated that there are now nearly 200,000 wild sheep in North America.
The privilege of killing one (or “harvesting” one, in a hunting euphemism) remains limited to the very few. It requires a lot of money or a lot of luck.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that there are more than 10 million biggame hunters in the United States. But only about 2,500 wild sheep are hunted each year across North America, a fraction compared with nearly every other animal.
“They’re like the collector’s edition Ferrari,” said Lance Kronberger, who owns Freelance Outdoor Adventures in Alaska and guides big-game hunts of all kinds. “There’s 200 of them made, and you have to get lucky to get one.”
Generally, there are two ways to hunt wild sheep. One is hunting’s version of the lottery — pay a few dollars and apply for one of the limited number of licenses that are restricted to certain territories and raffled off. Odds of winning can be infinitesimal. In Montana, 19,439 applications were submitted by state residents in 2015; licenses went to 111, a success rate of about 1 in 200. Nonresidents have a tougher time.
The second way to secure a chance at a wild sheep is to spend a lot of money. While residents of Alaska and those in Canada generally can hunt sheep within their own state, province or territory, nonresidents are required to hire a registered outfitter. The laws of supply and demand push the price of hunting a Dall’s up to about $25,000 and a Stone’s sheep to about $50,000. Hunts in Mexico, through outfitters or private landowners, can reach $100,000.
A wealthy few go beyond that. They bid on exclusive permits that are auctioned off annually to raise money for states, provinces and Indian reservations, seeing their lavish spending as a charitable donation, a tax write-off and a chance to capture one of hunting’s premier trophies.
Bidding at the ‘Sheep Show’
Brendan Burns sat in a padded stackable chair in the Tuscany Ballroom of the Peppermill Resort Spa Casino in Reno, Nevada. It was a Friday night in January, and there were about 1,000 people sitting at 100 round tables, having just eaten the one entree offered: steak. A convention of hunters was no place for a vegetarian option.
On stage was an auctioneer. The next item for bid, No. 15, was the California Desert Bighorn Sheep Permit. The year before, it went for $165,000, a state record.
Burns, a former wrestler at Ohio State University, grew up in Montana. He wears few signs that he is a world-class hunter or an executive for KUIU, a fast-growing gear and apparel company. Named for an island in southeastern Alaska and pronounced KOOyoo, it has, in just a few years, positioned itself as a Patagonia or the North Face of the camouflage set.
Burns held his phone to his ear. The voice on the other side belonged to Jason Hairston, KUIU’s 45-year-old founder. Among Hairston’s friends is Donald Trump Jr., a son of the president and an avid big-game hunter.
Hairston wanted the California permit. He saw it as a way to pay back his home state and an appropriate place to finish his “grand slam,” the term applied to those who have killed all four types of the North American wild sheep. A year earlier, he was the last one to drop out of the bidding.
Hairston, however, was in Washington, D.C. — at the Trump International Hotel for an inaugural ball. He handed the phone to his wife, Kristyn, who wore a white strapless gown. Afraid that her husband might drop out and be left disappointed again, she wanted to do the bidding through Burns. She took the phone to a quiet corner and left Hairston alone to wait for the result.
After going back and forth several times, Burns was decisive. After he nodded to $235,000, there was no response from the back. The tag, going once, going twice, was sold. The crowd applauded. Burns ended the call and people shook his hand.
In Washington, Hairston hugged his wife and highfived Donald Trump Jr., who asked whether he could come along on the hunt.
Where the Money Goes
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife receives 95 percent of the auction price — in this case, a record $223,250. That is fed into a general big-game budget of about $10 million, according to Regina Abella, California’s desert bighorn sheep coordinator. The money pays for sheep-specific employees and conservation efforts, like helicopter surveys and captures to test the animals for disease and collar them to track their health and movements.
No other game tags come close to creating the kind of revenues that the sheep tag does, Abella said.
The 30 or so tags auctioned annually at the convention tend to draw bids from a small circle of wealthy hunters, perhaps 25 of them. Many have someone else do the bidding for them, even if they are in the ballroom, too.
Such anonymity helps keep other potential bidders from knowing whom they are competing against for a coveted tag. More important, perhaps, it helps avoid the publicity that can fuel hunting’s critics.
Combined, the auction of about 30 permits over three nights in Reno raises about $3 million annually. The Wild Sheep Foundation adds money to that total and, last year, gave about $4.7 million to conservation efforts, mostly through state and provincial game departments or directly to Indian reservations.