Sheep horn growth
 

Was out looking for a bear recently and have come across a few groups of Sheep. A few of the rams in those groups look close (within a few inches or so) to legal. I'm not a Sheep hunter and didn't study them real close, but there were none that were definitively legal. It did make me curious about how much a ram's horns might grow over a summer. Anyone know how much a typical summer of growth would be?

It’s not linear, length grows fastest in the first 3 years and slows every year after.

It also depends on whether you are talking about 4/5 or full curl, and a young one with lamb tips or a mature broomed ram. A bighorn can hit 4/5 legal at 4.5 years (at the earliest, like in cadomin) but it’s gonna be a banana head squeaker. Most of them take 6-7 years, that’s when they start serious fights and they broom, and lose a lot of length. Mature broomed 4/5 curl is probably 9-10 mature full curl is 10-12 but many never make it to full, due to tight curls and continual brooming. Natural life span here in AB is 13-14 years max.

I've seen rams too old to age accurately and with horns so broomed off they're not legal.

Always thought that the full curl idea was pretty flawed, with brooming off and such. You know it is a fully mature ram (roman nose and tips the size of my wrist) but you can't harvest it because the horn is not perfect, like in the story books.