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How about some ideas like
1 Change the current 9 weeks season into 5x 2 week seasons. Take your pick which season you hunt and we get a longer season. But put the first/last season on draw.
2 Keep the current 4/5 rule but if you kill a short sheep you lose the next available opportunity. Means you gotta wait 4 yrs instead of 2 but you keep the sheep. If you are an outfitter ,you lose the next available permit for 1 year. Currently bringing in a short sheep you take a ticket but can hunt next year.
3 One sheep every 5 yrs
4 Sheep WMU `s have open cougar quota`s
5 Sheep WMU have additional hunting opportunity for cougars similar to the rest of the province ( you gotta wonder why these Zone`s that were excluded in the first place)
6 Where it can be proven that there is a sheep herd dynamics issue then additonal measures be taken to control predators until the pop. recovers.
7 Get some real training for sheep ageing. They very seldom get it right and are almost always underageing the rams from what I hear
Just some brainstorming
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I have to strongly disagree with #2. No way should you be allowed to keep a short sheep. I bet most sheep hunters get their first sheep and hold out for something much larger if they were to ever shoot another. I can see under the way I am interpreting what you typed that a lot of just short sheep will be shot because guys could keep the sheep as 'any sheep is a trophy' and not care if they ever hunt one again, or go with a buddy for the next 4 years and still get a sheep hunting fix. I know when I shot my sheep I went with my friend for his the next year as a tag along and he got one. Now he isn't buying a tag for sheep until I get another sheep which I would like to find a mature full curl and may never shoot another. He still likes getting out sheep hunting. For us it is the trip and journey and not just shooting a sheep.
I wonder about the measurements and how some of the info can be skewed. I shot a 8.5 year old ram, broomed on both sides and in an area where a legal ram isn't living too long. It had short final horn length but good mass and a nice ram for the area. It has 32 and 33" horns and I bet if you just looked at the numbers and didn't see a picture that it is a small ram. If I remember correctly from my registration form there is no mention of brooming and that 3-4 inches of 'horn growth' is no longer there. That is a pretty good difference in horn length/age of ram in my opinion and could be twisted to say that rams aren't growing as big in the area.